LaRue's Views

Last column

2012-01-12T10:13:00.000-08:00

January 12, 2012 - read, dammit

Dear Reader,

Thank you for reading this column. I have been writing it, every week, since April 11, 1990. I've missed a week or two every now and then. But not many.

Mostly I wrote about libraries. That's not surprising, since I have the great gift of doing work I love. Libraries are what I care about.

My perspective - LaRue's Views - is unique to me. Mainly, I speak for no one but myself.

Eventually, I realized that the job of any sentient being is not only to feel but to think. Thinking about libraries has led me into lots of other topics. I discovered that everything connects to everything else.

Sometimes my thoughts have found resonance in the minds and spirits of Douglas County residents. Sometimes, as the Letters to the Editor page attests, they have not.

I find myself at a point in my life when I am weighing things up. I am considering how best to spend my remaining days.

On the one hand, I am very proud of the institution I have helped to build. With my very astute Board of Trustees and a series of extraordinary staff we have taken what used to be a county department, ranked as the worst public library in the state, to an independent library district ranked as the best in the nation.

We earned it.

Moreover, the Douglas County Libraries is now blazing a path to the future not just in Colorado but in the profession, particularly in the area of the management of digital content.

I remain deeply engaged with this institution and its vital mission. I remain profoundly committed to the idea that public libraries do and should illuminate and advance their communities.

On the other hand, I believe our example stands in stark contrast to a decades-long trend. At too many levels of our nation, mostly under the multi-layered leadership of my generational cohorts, our society has been either passively neglecting or actively dismantling almost every aspect of our civic, educational, and even physical infrastructure.

I still want to write. I have to, I think.

But over the past couple of years I've done a lot of professional speaking. I've spoken to library, not-for-profit, and even some corporate audiences. I've followed people writing about similar topics on blogs and other social media.

I've concluded that I need to spend some time to deeply consider, then refocus, my efforts.

All of this is by way of saying that I'm not going to be writing a weekly column for local papers anymore.

I still have opinions about many topics (boy, do I), and from time to time I'll offer them to the Douglas County press.

For those of you who have followed my musings, and often stopped by to chat with me about them, my sincere thanks.

A library colleague (Patricia Hodapp, now director of the Santa Fe Public Library) once told me, "There's more to library advocacy than just standing on a corner and saying, 'Read, dammit!'" But it's not a bad place to start.

A mostly complete archive of my columns can be found at LaRuesViews.blogspot.com. Future writings will be linked to my website at www.jlarue.com.

Thank you for your attention.

---
LaRue's Views are his own.

January 5, 2012 - youth initiative a success

2012-01-05T09:50:00.000-08:00

Back around 2002-2003, I believe, the Douglas County School District conducted a survey of its student body. The results were disturbing. Many kinds of "risky" behavior (drug use and sexual activity, among others) were on the rise. Many students reported that they felt that they were not respected or valued by adults in the community.

In 2003 the Partnership of Douglas County Governments (founded in 2002 with its original members of the Towns of Castle Rock, Parker, and Larkspur, the City of Lone Tree, and the county) brought the school district into its membership.

In an effort to address what appeared to be growing unrest among our youth, the Partnership launched something called the Douglas County Youth Initiative. The idea was to establish an approach to youth issues that focused on "assets" -- what worked right -- rather than on the more punitive interventions of criminal justice.

I was fortunate enough to participate in the hiring process of their first executive director, Carla Turner. She started in 2005.

It happens that Carla resigned from that position at the end of 2011. It's a good time to look back and see what this innovative program has done.

First, the DCYI sought to increase youth, and youth service provider access to useful resources. The Douglas County Youth & Family Resource Guide, which can be found on the Douglas County Libraries website (follow the Community>Youth/Family Resources tab) now contains almost 300 pages of contacts.

Second, the Youth Initiative tried to provide a path for young people to participate in the adult world -- to give voice to their concerns and see how things work. The first Douglas County Youth Congress was held in 2008; four more have followed. At this event, young people meet with elected representatives, consider issues of the day, and then talk with legislators and others to test potential solutions.

The Youth Congress planning team for 2011 decided to coordinate a Youth Day of Service on April 20th, 2012. This will give youth an opportunity to give back to their communities -- and with any luck, establish a history of civic awareness and engagement.

Third, Carla introduced a program called "Wraparound." The idea is this: suppose you have a family that's in difficulty. Things are getting worse. Your son is getting wilder, your daughter feels threatened.

In the normal course of things, the usual systems can't really do much for you until there's a crisis. The son gets arrested. The girl gets attacked.

At that point, all the usual apparatus of criminal justice steps in with its confrontations, penalties, multiple levels of costs, and ongoing stress.

But suppose, instead, you were able to assemble a team of friendly supporters (friends, family, and professional consultants) BEFORE things blew up. Suppose you were able to build on the things that weren't broken in the family and head off the crisis.

Wouldn't that be better? It would certainly be less expensive.

Wraparound now has six facilitators (largely funded through grants) and a family support partner serving families across Douglas County. An amazing 81% of the families who start the process (which typically takes about a year) report success. They go from "in immediate danger" to stable.

That isn't all the Youth Initiative has done. But it's impressive. And the last youth survey showed significant improvement in virtually all measures.

You don't often read about a program that works. It's worth celebrating.

My warm best wishes to Carla Turner, and for the continued success of this remarkable program.

---
LaRue's Views are his own.

March 3, 1993 - volunteer data project

2011-12-31T07:32:00.001-08:00

To some people, moving to a new town is a lot of fun. They like the challenge of change. They enjoy figuring out how the streets run. They get a keen pleasure from puzzling out a new batch of faces and personalities.

Other people -- especially those folks who moved because their spouses got new jobs -- find it very difficult to get settled. They may spend long, lonely years before they even begin to feel that they know their way around, or can go some place and be recognized.

There are many strategies for getting rooted in your new home town (or county, or state). The first, and to my mind the most important, is to read the newspaper. Of course, those of you who are reading this, already know that; and those who don't read the paper, sure won't find out here.

A second strategy is to join something: a church, a social group, a school committee, a civic club, even a library. Such organizations provide a ready mix of people, with a high probability that many of them will care about the same things you do.

A third approach -- and one of the most rewarding -- is to become a volunteer.

No one really knows for sure just how many volunteers there are in the United States. A 1989 Gallup Survey showed volunteer hours totaled 20.5 billion. More important than the numbers of volunteers is the fact that many organizations absolutely depend on them.

One such organization is the Adult Center for Training, or ACT. ACT is a Douglas County literacy program, currently serving Castle Rock, Parker, and Highlands Ranch. In brief, it pairs people who don't know how to read with people willing to donate their time to teach them.

But ACT isn't alone. Throughout the county are many other worthy organizations performing a variety of useful and interesting tasks. And volunteering for such organizations can provide a fascinating introduction to the people and services of an area.

Volunteerism can also lead to jobs. It often does lead to positions on Boards of Directors. For instance, our newest Library Trustee, Sue Meacham, volunteered in the library's Technical Services Department for several years. Now she's one of my bosses.

I'm thinking about volunteers lately for several reasons. First, the indefatigable Beryl Jacobson (Douglas County Extension Agent and fellow News Press columnist) has secured a grant to gather information about volunteer opportunities in the county. Second, it happens that Suzanne LaRue, a librarian who happens to be my wife, is the project director.

Third, after all this information is gathered, the Douglas Public Library District will add it to our Community Information Referral system. People will be able to search this database either at the library, or by "dialing in" to it via a home computer.

We'll design the system so people can search for volunteer opportunities either by a subject that interests them ("gardening," for instance), or the location ("Parker"), or both.

So if you happen to work for a not-for-profit organization located in or serving Douglas County residents, and you'd like a little electronic solicitation of volunteer assistance, give Suzanne a call at 681-3405, or at the Extension Office (688-3096).

And if you happen to be someone looking to BE a volunteer, watch this space for more information soon. In the meantime, give Kathy Walsh of ACT a call at 841-8615. Evenings are best.

December 29, 2011 - so you want to be an author

2011-12-29T07:00:00.000-08:00

Recently I had the pleasure of meeting one Jeannette Albersheim. Mrs. Albersheim is in her 90s, and has many interesting stories to tell.

One of them concerned a journey that began in January 1944. While still in her early 20s, and with a Master's degree in Public Administration already behind her, she left what she called "a well-paying, interesting job in Washington DC" to sign up as volunteer for the Red Cross.

First, she had thought about signing up for a paying position with the Navy -- but it looked like she would just wind up stationed "across the Potomac." She wanted to see the world.

And she did. Working with the Red Cross, she became a just-behind-the-front recreation and hospital worker. She was at the blitz in London, Paris just after D-Day, and then around other major battles in France, including the pivotal Battle of the Bulge.

Ms. Albersheim told me that she had written up some remembrances from that time -- about 40 "chapters" of newspaper column length. What could I recommend for her about publishing them?

I get that question a lot. People suppose librarians know agents who can rocket promising authors to bestsellerdom. Maybe some librarians do. I don't.

There are several routes to publication these days. The traditional route is: "sign a contract with a publisher for 10%" model. That takes work, too - round after round of submissions, either directly, or through that elusive agent.

There is the" vanity press" of old, where you pay the full cost, plus mark-up, for a print run. More recent is the Print-on-Demand option, with services like Lulu.com -- you pay for a copy at a time.

There is "self-publishing" - where you do all the work to format your text, then subcontract the printing.

There is the ebook option, with Amazon, with Barnes and Noble, or a host of new epublishing startups like Smashwords.com or BookBrewer.com. Each of these options has its own costs.

People have a tendency to just imagine the end: a handsome book, beautifully typeset, professionally bound, and graced with a beautiful cover.

But getting there takes work. There is the writing. Then comes the rewriting for clarity and structure. Then comes the copyediting. (Nothing screams "amateur!" like a page littered with spelling and grammatical errors.) Then comes book design, page layout, tables of contents, and all the extras that make for a complete manuscript, such as securing both copyright and an International Standard Book Number.

Then comes, for some books, indexing. Then there's book cover design, followed by (for books formatted for paper, anyhow) printing, binding, and distribution.

No matter the format, the biggest challenge of all (after the writing itself) is marketing. There are many fine books that no one ever reads because not all authors are natural marketers. Not all publishers are good at it either.

The truth is, while producing a book isn't easy, it's not all that hard anymore, either. What's hard is finding someone to read it. (And just in passing, that's one of the key roles of the public library.)

So I asked Mrs. Albersheim why she wanted to publish, and for whom. She'd already sent most of her manuscript to family through letters, she said. But she wanted to offer her experience to the world. She wasn't trying to make money on it. She wanted to preserve her memories without having to put in years of editing, formatting, and marketing.

I suggested another relatively low-hurdle alternative: publish to the World Wide Web. I set up a blog for her (there are lots of free options; I like blogspot.com), and posted a few of her chapters. Then a couple other library staff (Cecily North, and Annette Gray) helped her clean them up, and scan some wonderful photographs from Mrs. Albersheim's files.

Let me say right now that the library can't commit to help every aspiring author walk through all the stages of self-publication. There are too many of you, and too few of us.

On the other hand, I think we do need to get more thoughtful and systematic about helping people figure all this out. I'm just about persuaded that self-publishing is one of the most important trends of our time, and the library needs to be at the heart of it. I'm going to be thinking about this issue over the next year.

Meanwhile, you can read the remarkable story of Jeannette Albersheim's WWII adventures here: redcrossatwar.blogspot.com.

--
LaRue's Views are his own.

December 22, 2011 - a gift suitable for all ages

2011-12-22T10:50:00.000-08:00

For the past several years, I've been reprinting what I've come to think of as "my holiday column" -- a tradition. I hope you enjoy it.

***

What we really need is an all-purpose gift that will satisfy everybody. It should be suitable for all ages. It should require no assembly. It shouldn't need batteries. You shouldn't have to feed it. It should last forever. It should be constantly entertaining. The more the recipient uses it, the more he or she should like it.

And of course, it should be free.

No such animal, right? Wrong. I'm talking about a library card.

I'll never understand it. Most adults these days carry cards of every description; most of them DON'T have library cards. So for the woman or man who has everything, why not offer everything else? -- access to the total accumulated knowledge of the human race, not to mention the most wonderful stories ever told.

Of course, the real winner of a gift like this is not an adult. It's a child.

Here's all you have to do to make your holidays a success. First, come down to the library and fill out a library card application for your child. Then, check out three of four books. Wrap the card and the books and offer them to your children in the fashion that your holiday traditions dictate. Save this very special package for last.

When the child rips it open, say that this unassuming little card will let him or her get presents all year long. Then read your child to sleep that night with one of the books.

After your children have gotten bored with their other toys, read them (or have them read) the other books, then trot them down to the library in that slow week at the end of the year. Teach your children about exchanging one present for another.

At the library, every day is Christmas. Behind every book cover there are riches. After introducing your kids to a treasure trove beyond Aladdin's wildest dreams, why not mosey over to the adult section, and browse through the latest offerings yourself? You know you deserve it.

Many people -- librarians, teachers, Secretaries of Education, even sport celebrities and actors -- have urged every child to obtain and use a library card. It's good advice.

Besides, at prices like these, who can argue? If you are not fully satisfied after a lifetime of learning and pleasure -- I'll cheerfully refund your money.

Trust me, this could be the best season's greeting card you'll ever send.

--
LaRue's Views are his own.

December 15, 2011 - tell me a story

2011-12-15T08:04:00.000-08:00

When I was first starting out in my career, I had the pleasure of meeting the outstanding State Librarian of Illinois. Her name was Bridget Lamont.

Bridget was poised, articulate, incisive, and compelling.

I remember attending a meeting in Springfield. She entered the room, worked it (chatting with people, shaking hands, telling and gathering stories), then went up to speak. She made strong eye contact with everybody. When one of our more troublesome library directors came into the room late, she greeted him warmly, and invited him to sit right up there close to her, in the front row.

She presented her updates clearly, and somehow managed to get us all to go along with her on some new initiatives.

I was impressed. Later, I asked some colleagues about her background. "Oh, she started as a children's librarian," they told me.

At first, I was surprised. At that stage of my career, I didn't get into the children's room much. But the more I paid attention to the services libraries provide to children, the more I understood the secret to Bridget's success.

In brief, she was so good because she recognized that all of us, in some important ways, are still children. That is, we like to be remembered by name. We like to be smiled at even when we're grouchy. We like to hear stories. We like to do group activities that are fun.

Lately, I've been spending a lot of my professional time talking and thinking about the library's leadership role in the application of and access to various technologies. But after reading "The Polar Express" last night to about a hundred pre-schoolers, I'm reminded that Bridget is still teaching me by example.

You may have a high speed Internet connection at home. You may have all kinds of fancy home theater screens and DVD equipment. But nothing, nothing, beats gathering a bunch of kids in their pjs and reading a really good book together.

About a third of our business in libraries is this very, very important work of live storytelling. If all libraries did were story times, they would still be vital community institutions.

Some of that is the simple task of "reading readiness." We get kids excited about reading, because they can see that's where the stories come from. Through playing with sounds -- singing rhyming songs, for instance -- we grow their "phonological awareness."

Every story adds new words, meanings, and connections. That's about vocabulary.

We remind children that words are everywhere. That's growing their "print awareness."

We grow their own narrative skills by exposing them to thousands of other stories. That helps kids start to link things together, to see how events play out, to see how character is revealed through choices. And finally, we help children recognize specific letters, which in turn paves the road to reading fluency.

All of this is very sound pedagogy, and you can find out more about that on the library's website here: douglascountylibraries.org/storytime.

But the wonderful thing about public libraries is that it's not about school (even if it will make you better at school). It's about fun. It's about exploring the world of stories and ideas. Storytimes help kids become more genuinely curious about the world, to play well with others, and to always have lots of interesting things to think about.

Acting like that helps you grow up to be a pretty decent adult. Or even a state librarian.
---
LaRue's Views are his own.

December 8, 2011 - knowledge has a price

2011-12-08T05:46:00.000-08:00

December 8, 2011 - knowledge has a price

I've been presenting this week to librarians, Friends organizations, and board members in North Carolina. Speaking with me has been one Bill Millett, a consultant who does a lot of work with libraries.

Millett is a former economic development person, and he has some interesting things to say about that. For a long time, he noted, North Carolina was winning the economic development game across the nation. They were landing one big company after another. Why? Because they had cheap labor.

But that's begun to change. Some of those companies are leaving. Now, the competition isn't just national, it's global. There is no way that any place in America can keep providing the cheapest labor in the world.

More to the point, that's not even what companies are looking for anymore. They want skilled labor. He talked about a company in Dallas that moved overseas because they had 5,000 vacant highly technical positions -- and not enough qualified applicants.

We know that China and India are spending a lot of time and attention on education. Their instruction is now heavily focused not just on Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (the so-called STEM disciplines), but also on developing the creativity of young students. Maybe you've seen the numbers: there are more people in the top 25% of their student population than we have students.

Amid the campaign talk about American exceptionalism, it might behoove us to notice that we're not even in the top twenty of international student performance (according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's Programme for International Student Assessment). In Colorado, a quarter of our students aren't graduating from high school -- half of them, in Denver, our capital. National research suggests that we may be raising the first generation of Americans who will be LESS educated than their parents.

To Millett, this willful erosion of what he calls our "knowledge infrastructure" -- the investment in early literacy, through higher education, to the continuous retooling that will be necessary in a global economy -- is a kind of treason. Our leaders are frittering around with pointless political gotchas when the livelihood of our children and grandchildren, and our standing as a nation, are imperiled.

He tells the story about a company that relocated to Charlotte some years ago, bringing 1,200 jobs with them. He writes, "Charlotte was a finalist along with Atlanta, Dallas, Tampa and Nashville. On the day that he announced that Charlotte had been selected, the company president said that all of the cities had much to offer. What made Charlotte the winner were a few factors that distinguished it from the competition, among them the quality of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Public Library."

Since then, of course, that library has closed branches, laid off staff, and shut down a series of award-winning programs. The problem? Funding.

Millett, a Baby Boomer, said, "People who served in World War II are now known as the Greatest Generation. How will our generation be remembered?"

The Greatest Generation responded to the threat of Sputnik by putting man on the moon.

We never went back. [Correction: yes, we did. But our last manned moon trip was in 1972, 39 years ago.] These days, even our upper atmospheric shuttles are all worn out.

Which country will launch tomorrow's satellites? Where will they learn the skills and the attitudes that build confidently toward a better future?
---
LaRue's Views are his own.

December 1, 2011 - the science of highways

2011-12-01T14:02:00.000-08:00

Every now and then, I run across something that so directly contradicts what I thought I knew that it stops me in my tracks.

I believed, like many people, that the Interstate Highways System was based on two memories of its champion, President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

After retiring as Supreme Commander of Allied forces in Europe during WWII, he contrasted his admiration of the German Autobahn with his trip as a young officer with the 1919 Army Convoy. The 1919 convoy's goal had been to cross the country from Washington, D.C. to San Francisco. It took 24 days. Twenty-one men were injured.

I assumed there had been business reasons for the highways, too, involving lobbying by the growing automobile industry.

Of course, Eisenhower wasn't the first to think of the problem, or the solution. Earlier plans had been drawn up. But it wasn't until 1956 that anything happened.

Why then?

Well, there was a socio-political component too: after the Supreme Court in 1954 ordered busing to address segregation, a lot of white people fled to the suburbs. And of course, the GI Bill paid for a lot of new housing.

But then I ran across a new explanation. I've been reading a book called "Fool me twice: fighting the assault on science," by Shawn Lawrence Otto.

In brief, Otto says it was all about the atomic bomb. The original military response plan to a nuclear attack was to tell its citizens to build bomb shelters, and "Duck and Cover." (The 1951 film of that name is available on Youtube. It features a remarkably catchy jingle for so grim a subject.)

But a school desk wasn't much protection against a gamma ray burst.

Eventually the Atomic Energy Commission realized the only way to survive the more powerful hydrogen bomb was not to be there when it went off. Otto writes, "As a civil defense official who served from 1953 to 1957 explained, the focus changed from 'Duck and Cover' to 'run like hell.'"

But evacuating a city, even with plenty of warning, just wasn't possible given the roads of the time. Hence, Congress approved the Interstate Highway System, whose full name is the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways.

Fortunately, evacuating an American city before an impending nuclear attack has not yet been necessary. But the Interstate has been used, many times, to try to evacuate cities just ahead of hurricanes. Even with "counterflow" strategies (using all lines on both sides to go away from the city), the results have been mixed. But surely, it works better than the old congested lanes with a million intersections and stoplights.

The point has been made since that time that good roads are a major contributor to economic growth. Consider the effect of C-470 and E-470 alone on our regional economy.

Highways aren't cheap. In 2006, the cost of construction (for the length at that time of 46,876 miles of road) was estimated at $425 billion. About 70% of the funding comes from federal fuel taxes. The rest is from state and local matching funds.

The thesis of "Fool me twice" is that most of the problems - and potential solutions - we face or discover as a species these days are still rooted not just in politics, but in science. And that's something all of us could pay a little more attention to.
--
LaRue's Views are his own.

November 24, 2011 - no TV before 2

2011-11-24T10:09:00.000-08:00

It's an old argument.

Socrates expressed doubts about literacy. Teach people to read, he said, and they won't have to remember anything. Their minds would get lazy. They would believe that just by decoding scrawls on paper, they had somehow gotten to the heart of some idea.

But real knowledge, real understanding, takes time and attention and deep thought.

He was right. And wrong.

It is true that few of us examine our lives as closely as Socrates examined his. And literacy does make it possible for relatively lazy people to think they know something big when they only know a few small things.

But current literacy research (see "Proust and the Squid," by Maryanne Wolfe) demonstrates that reading helps us think faster and better. We use the words and ideas of others as scaffolds. We climb them, then add to them.

Literacy is the foundation of shared knowledge. What we may lose in depth, we gain in breadth and height.

While there are few modern day Socrates, there are many sounding the alarm about the next breakthrough in thinking: technology.

According to a recent article in Wired Magazine (see www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/10/infant-tv-guidelines), "a decade ago, the American Academy of Pediatrics suggested that parents limit TV consumption by children under two years of age."

More recent and comprehensive research by the AAP confirms the original caution and extends it to all kinds of screen time. The bottom line: the best thing we can do for babies is talk to and touch them. Language literally builds their brains.

The second most potent strategy is play. Plunk a baby in front of a TV, DVD or PC or any other glowing screen and they get hypnotized. But it doesn't do anyone under the age of two any good, and may do them harm.

In fact, just letting kids entertain themselves has proven to be far better for their developing minds. They solve problems. They grow their imaginations and creativity.

What does happen if little ones watch too much TV?

Falling asleep in front of the tube leads to sleep disorders -- no matter how old you are. But passive screen watching has been linked to mood and behavior problems, and perhaps to attention deficit disorder.

A 2006 study by some Cornell researchers (see forum.johnson.cornell.edu/faculty/waldman/autism-waldman-nicholson-adilov.pdf) found that "approximately seventeen percent of the growth in autism in California and Pennsylvania during the 1970s and 1980s is due to the growth of cable television." Not only that, in places where it rains a lot, more people watch TV, and autism rises.

Television, it seems, is a "trigger" for autism. Or, to work in the influence of too much rain, let's say it "precipitates" autism.

The main thing about kids up to the age of two is that if they're staring blankly at a screen, then probably nobody is talking to them. So programs and software that are sold as "educational" for this age group probably aren't.

Does this mean that technology is evil? No, it just means that kids don't really even understand what's happening on a screen until then. So before the age of two, talk, play, and read with them.

But what about after they're two? A 2001 study by the University of Massachusetts probing the effect of childhood viewing on adolescents (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11326591) found that "Viewing educational programs as preschoolers was associated with higher grades, reading more books, placing more value on achievement, greater creativity, and less aggression."

In other words, the content of the program was more important than the medium.

Library staff had an interesting discussion recently about the use of iPads in library storytimes. Should we or shouldn't we?

Here's my take: the core of our children's services remains the celebration of story. We sing, dance, do finger plays, talk in funny voices, and use books, puppet shows, and yes, technology, to infect children with the sheer fun of reading.

The technology isn't the thing that matters. The engagement and language, the playfulness, is.

-
LaRue's Views are his own.

November 17, 2011 - imagine a world of men

2011-11-17T06:04:00.000-08:00

A few years ago, I was riding on a bus with a librarian from China. We talked about an issue few people seem to know about.

In brief, there's a growing global imbalance between the sexes. There are a lot more boys than girls being born in China, for reasons I'll get to below. There are slightly more girls than boys being born in the United States.

At first, this looked like a golden opportunity. Could there be a better time to launch a Sino-American dating service?

But we realized that exotic romance wasn't the only option. A world with a big surplus of men and not enough women had one very probable result: war.

Now comes Mara Hvistendahl's book, "Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men." The problem is getting worse. War isn't the only issue.

As of this writing, Asia alone is "missing" 160 million women and girls. That's the entire female population of the United States.

How did it happen? Well, in many Asian and Eastern European cultures, there's a preference for boys. And technology largely invented in and promoted by the West -- the early detection of the sex of the fetus, and the ready availability of abortion -- has enabled parents to terminate a female fetus until finally they get the boy they wanted.

In 2007, one Chinese port city reported that for children under the age of five, there were 163 boys for every 100 girls.

College recruiters report the odds like this all the time. Doesn't this discrepancy "favor" women?

No. In many places now, there's not so much international dating as the widespread purchasing (and selling) of brides. Women are also forced into prostitution -- what we call "human trafficking."

This is one of those issues where you can predict the "sides:" pro-choice and family planning versus anti-abortion. But whatever your ideological bent, you can't help but think this situation -- a global preponderance of men and the commodification of ever-scarcer women -- probably isn't good.

In those historical periods when women were under-represented, as in the Wild West, or the Gold Rush, violence was common. In ancient Athens, "a sex ratio of between 143 to 174 males for every 100 females" meant that women were essentially "confined within household compounds."

The original intent of early sex detection (the American invention of the sonogram in the sixties) was to help families get smaller: people could have the child they wanted, and stop. Over-population looked like a big problem then. For some people and places, it still does.

On the other hand, we've learned that as people become more affluent they tend to have fewer children anyhow. The government doesn't have to intervene.

So once again, technology has sometimes surprising consequences.

While this problem may appear to be personal -- each family making its own decisions -- it also has national and global consequences.

What should be done about it?

Opinions will differ. Hvistendahl argues for a global ban of sex-selective abortions. Others will continue to push for a ban on all abortions. But who will enforce such bans, and how?

It's an important subject. I recommend the book for anyone who just doesn't have enough to worry about, or possibly, has been worried about the wrong things altogether.

--
LaRue's Views are his own.

November 10, 2011 - art centers mark coming of age

2011-11-10T09:37:00.000-08:00

I have now had the distinct pleasure of attending the ribbon cutting ceremonies for two wonderful facilities: the Lone Tree Arts Center, and the Parker Arts and Cultural Events (PACE) Center.

The Lone Tree Arts Center opened its doors on August 11. It has a 500 seat theater, an additional 150-225 seat event theater that opens through a glass wall to a 300-350 seat outdoor terrace theater; and a lovely and functional entrance plaza. The cost for the facility was $23 million.

The PACE Center had its ribbon cutting ceremony on Oct. 28 (and will be officially opening on Oct. 29). And by the way, it was the most innovative such ceremony I've seen. Several ribbons were pulled across the stage, one behind the other, with one town Council person assigned to each. At the countdown, all of the ribbons were scissored through at once -- an exciting and interesting visual display.

The PACE Center has a 536 seat theater, 250 seat amphitheater, an event room with a catering and teaching kitchen, an art gallery, a dance studio, a media laboratory, and classrooms. It cost $21.7 million.

Because the Lone Tree Arts Center opened first, I've already attended about four events, and find that it works beautifully not only as a theater, but also as a sort of mini-conference center and luncheon space, as well as a reception and featured speaker venue.

I've only attended one performance at the PACE Center, but I can see already that it will be a success, too.

Both centers have comfortable theaters with fine acoustics. Both have thoughtful designs. Lone Tree used Ohio-based architects Westlake Reed Leskosky. Parker employed Denver-based Semple Brown Designs.

Both centers took advantage of just the right moment in the economy to build impressive public spaces that were remarkably affordable.

There are some differences. The funding for the Lone Tree Arts Center was based on a public vote, and narrowly carried. The funding for the PACE Center is based on Certificates of Participation (COPs) -- a kind of mortgage paid for out of existing revenues. Both projects have demonstrated close management of costs, and both Lone Tree and Parker have relied upon corporate and private donations.

Another difference may be just my own read. From the perspective of live performance, the Lone Tree Arts Center is clearly set up as a touring facility. That is, a show rolls in, sets up the stage, does the performance, and leaves.

The PACE Center feels like a more diverse community space. While it can host touring shows, too, the studios, media lab, and classrooms seem to encourage local citizens not just to consume culture, but to create it.

There is room in Douglas County for both approaches, and I'll be curious to see how these design differences pan out over the next few years.

I can't help but notice as I wander through each of the towns to see the related new construction, particularly in Lone Tree. An investment in the arts (and medical centers, in both communities) seems to encourage other investments. I can certainly see the appeal of living within walking distance of either place. Both will increase the vitality of their respective municipalities.

It's a good thing to be able to drive just a short distance to a great show, and be home before midnight. Now we just need more late night restaurants. Douglas County is coming of age.

Kudos to the leadership of both Lone Tree and Parker, and congratulations to your citizens.
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LaRue's Views

November 3, 2011 - we revere the book

2011-11-03T14:18:00.000-07:00

A big study done in 2005 found that when average citizens heard "library" they thought "book."

Recently, the study was repeated. Since 2005, a lot of things have happened.

Over 97% of America's libraries have Internet access. Over 80% offer free wireless.

Many initiatives have been launched around the nation to connect even rural residents to the most sophisticated computer resources on the globe. That includes business databases, periodical articles, and a host of government and private research firms.

Based on the the most cutting edge investigations into brain development, libraries have articulated and responded to the need for early childhood literacy. That includes not just live storytelling for all ages, but outreach to families in a variety of settings.

The evidence is clear. The more stimulus young minds experience -- particularly around exposure to language -- the better their lives will be. Libraries really make a difference here. In Douglas County alone, we offer over 5,000 story times a year for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers.

In many communities around the nation, libraries are economic anchor stores. We generate more traffic than grocery stores. That traffic creates a "halo" effect. A visit to the library often results in $20 of sales to nearby businesses.

Speaking of business, more people come to the library than ever to look for jobs, or establish a business that creates jobs.

And we do a land office business in the fields of music and movies -- which represent their own kind of literacy.

So what does current research find?

Today, when people hear "library" even MORE of them think "book."

Librarians are constantly alert to what their communities use us for. But there's a profound disconnect between what we observe, and what our citizens feel about it.

Some of my colleagues are deeply frustrated by this. Not me.

Here's how I see it. Libraries, more than almost any other institution in history, have an unassailable brand.

When it comes right down to it, most Americans have a profound reverence for the Book.

That's because Book means three things:

* story. One of the deepest drives of humankind is for a narrative. We want to know what happened to whom. We care about character and transformation. We ask, "and then what happened?" The Book tells us a tale: a journey, a challenge, a discovery.

* idea. But it's not just about a series of events. The story has to be about something. We want to learn, too, not just be entertained. We want to know what the story means.

* immortality. While all of us remember stories from our early days, that memory only goes so far. We recall parents, grandparents, maybe even great-grandparents. We may come to know children, grandchildren, even great-grandchildren. And that's about where the flame of human connection and continuity gutters out.

But the Book endures. We still have the story of Gilgamesh, from 5,000 years ago. We know about Egyptian gods imagined in the time of the pyramids. The Bible tells us (among other things) about the tribes of Israel from millennia past. We have histories from the age of the Greeks and Romans. We have fairy tales from before English was a language.

And every hard won secret wrung from the glory of nature, every founding fact of science, every practical discovery of engineering and medicine, has also been captured by print. We don't have to lose those things. Books enshrine knowledge.

The Book preserves life because it preserves memory. It conquers death.

And where do Books live? The Old Norse Gods went to Valhalla; books, to the library.

While not every book does in fact endure, within or without the library, the idea of the Book, and of an institution dedicated to the gathering, organization, and presentation of it to everyone is a founding principle of civilization.

So today's library is not JUST about books. But what an awesome place to start.

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LaRue's Views are his own.

October 27, 2011 - no test in Constitution

2011-10-27T05:32:00.000-07:00

On the one hand, we honor it. We appeal to it. We think it matters.

On the other hand, it was and is riddled with profound mistakes.

The Constitution of the United States of America was crafted by some of the brightest people the world has known. They were also well-educated by the standards of the time. Of the 55 delegates who drafted the Constitution in 1787, 60 percent of them had attended college.

The striking idea at the heart of our founding document was that the purpose of government was to preserve individual liberties. Yet at the same time, it explicitly endorsed slavery, and denied women the right to vote.

Recently I've been reading about the many controversies that attended its adoption (see the writings of Cornell professors Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore). Here's one you don't hear much about:

In 1787 and 1788, the draft U.S. Constitution was harshly challenged because it was explicitly irreligious. Not anti-religious. There's a difference.

But unlike virtually every other political document of the age, the draft Constitution made no references to God. Religion makes only one appearance: Article 6 declares that "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States."

And that was news. Eleven of the thirteen original states did have religious tests. Even in Rhode Island, founded on the principles of religious tolerance, and a place where many Catholics and Jews worshiped, you had to be a Protestant to hold office.

Virginia and New York had adopted freedom from a religious test, however, probably under the influence of James Madison, who in the Federalist Papers wrote that too fervent a pursuit of religious opinions lead men "to vex and oppress each other."

But a Massachusetts Constitutional delegate protested that the no religious test clause meant that "a papist, or an infidel" was just as eligible as Protestants. Delegates from New Hampshire and North Carolina worried about "pagans, deists, Mahometans [sic]," Jews, abolitionist Quakers, and "yea, an atheist at the helm of government."

A Connecticut constitutional delegate proposed a one sentence preamble to the Constitution, to at least begin with God. A Virginia delegate proposed that the religious test be amended to require no OTHER test than a belief in God, who would reward the good and punish the evil.

Both changes were overwhelmingly rejected by the convention.

Why? According to defenders of the article, public service should be open to any "wise or good citizen." There was as much a shortage then as now, and no religion seemed to have a corner on them.

Baptist leaders defended the no religious test clause. Religion should be detached from "temporal power" lest it be corrupted by it. That wasn't just a fear, it was clear recent history, both in England, and in the colonies. Let the state try to promote a particular religious view, and tyranny followed. Religion was between man and God, not man and state.

Religion just wasn't the business of government. Or as Jefferson wrote, "The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say There are twenty gods, or no God. It neither breaks my leg nor picks my pocket."

Another defender wrote that the time had passed "when nations could be kept in awe with stories of God's sitting with legislators and dictating laws." No less a personage than John Adams, just before the Constitutional convention, wrote that the architects of American governments never "had interviews with the gods or were in any way under the inspiration of Heaven." Rather, our governments were "founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretense of miracle or mystery..."

So at last, the United States Constitution was approved, and the prohibition on religious tests was preserved.

The clear separation between government and religion was further reinforced by the adoption of the First Amendment. But that's another story.

--
LaRue's Views are his own.

October 20, 2011 - he made the toys we wanted

2011-10-20T06:25:00.000-07:00

The first computer I ever used was an Apple ][+. It only displayed 40 characters per line, and didn't understand upper and lower case. Mostly I used it for spreadsheets, which was a revelation.

Then I used an Apple //e (Apple loved using idiosyncratic typewriter characters back then). And with that, I wrote a comprehensive computer catalog manual for a library in Springfield IL. After that, I knew I had to have something that made the writing process so much easier.

Briefly, I considered a new machine from Apple, called the "Lisa." It was the precursor to the Macintosh. But it was very pricey.

So I bought a Kaypro II -- a machine running the CP/M operating system, then the dominant business platform. It was the first loan of my life ($2500 for computer and printer). I paid it off in two years, mostly through writing about computers.

My next computer was an MS-DOS machine, also from Kaypro.

When Windows came out, I found it really confusing, contradictory, and thoroughly inelegant. Then a friend lent me an Apple Powerbook, a Macintosh laptop. I gave it a hard and thoughtful look.

And it grabbed me. I saw what Windows was TRYING to do (which was "copy Apple"). The Apple operating system was a brilliantly executed, paradigm-shifting way to think about interacting with a computer. I shifted platforms.

Later came the other fascinating devices: the Newton (in that brief period when Steve Jobs was ousted from Apple by John Sculley), then (after Jobs returned) the iPod, the many interesting Mac designs, the iPhone, the iPad.

Most of the folks in my family use Apple computers, although later I shifted again to the Linux operating system, mostly to explore the Internet. But I do have, and use, an iPad.

After hearing about the death of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs on Oct. 5, I listened again to his famous 2005 commencement speech at Stanford. He talked about how he dropped out of college, then did things that didn't seem important at the time.

For instance, he took a calligraphy class.

Later, he even got fired from the very company he founded.

But he came to realize that those experiences became the foundation of his character, and his life's path.

Jobs was not an engineer or a programmer. He was a designer, with a passion for the subtle touches that mark the difference between something that works and is serviceable, versus something that not only works, but is also an engaging sensual delight.

And he rediscovered the freedom of new beginnings.

He was that extraordinary phenomenon, a visionary. He had a passion for the future, a belief that something "insanely great" was not only possible, but urgently necessary.

His management style was often acerbic, confrontative, and disruptive. But he shipped the products that people wanted.

A few weeks ago, I read that Apple was, briefly, the most valuable company in the world. Even after it fell back behind Exxon, it still remained the unchallenged tech company, surpassing not only early rival IBM, but the company that once seemed unbeatable: Microsoft.

There's a cynical phrase. "He who dies with the most toys wins." Jobs created some of the most compelling toys the world had ever seen. And as someone else noted, poignantly, millions of people heard about Jobs' death ON a device that he created.

And now he's dead, a man a year younger than I am, the kind of detail one can't help but notice.

There are never enough years, I suppose, at least not if we have our health and the joy of translating dreams into reality. Money, based on all the psychological research to date, doesn't seem to have anything to do with happiness.

But here's something that does matter. One man turned his restless imagination into a fountain of creation. That's the big reward. He made things. He changed things.

So my tribute is just two words, finally, the two words so hard to earn, and so rare to hear from those we ourselves admire.

Well done.

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LaRue's Views are his own.

October 13, 2011 - who will be the last one standing?

2011-10-13T05:22:00.000-07:00

Back in 2008, I was interviewed by a reporter. With a knowing air, he asked me if libraries were going to survive the Internet. On Feb. 27, 2009, after 150 years of operation, his newspaper, the Rocky Mountain News, printed its final edition.

Now when reporters ask me that question I answer, "You bet we'll survive. Will you?"

For awhile, it looked like only the smaller newspapers would make it, because they provided the only way for local businesses to advertise. But now even the smaller papers are feeling the pinch, shrinking their staffs to the point where a lot of news just doesn't get covered.

And if newspapers disappear, who WILL cover the local news? I worry about that. Can citizen journalism provide enough quality content? And how are they supposed to make a living?

There may also be a big shake-up in the world of book publishing.

As it happens, libraries are a big part of that marketplace. We account for about 10% of all commercial publishing sales. For children's book, it's 40%.

But now some publishers (four of the big six) won't sell ebooks to libraries at all. The other two will only lease them. (And as I've written before, when you "buy" an ebook, odds are good you're just leasing it, too. Read the license agreement that came with your Kindle or Nook.)

These big publishing houses have made a unilateral decision that overturns centuries of precedent: they have denied ownership of content to libraries (requiring us to go through third parties to manage that content), AND raised their price to us over the straight retail cost.

Part of that is because they believe that libraries rob them of sales. But think that through. Last year, Douglas County citizens checked out over eight and a half million items. Does anyone really think people would have bought that many?

What libraries do is ENCOURAGE sales, by letting our patrons sample lots of things, and building up their habits of reading, listening, and watching. That habit is the practice of literacy. And it's also the creation of a larger market for stories and ideas.

Over 2 million people a year visit our catalog. They're all looking for books, and we make it easier to find them. I buy a lot of books myself, but it's because I found the authors I like at the library.

Yet some publishers would be much happier bypassing the library altogether, and going with the Netflix model, now adopted by Amazon. Pay a monthly subscription fee, and read all you want! Never mind that the cost of that deal is considerably higher than what you'll pay to a library, and you still won't own anything.

Meanwhile, Douglas County Libraries has identified over 700 publishers who are eager to sell to us. And the growth of self-publishing (from 29,000 titles in 2004 to over 2.7 million in 2010) has put a lot of authors out there who just might be willing to sell their ebooks to us directly. Recently, three of the top 10 bestsellers in America were self-published, so it's not like we'd be buying things people don't want to read.

Can libraries manage our own electronic content, integrating it into our existing catalogs? Indeed we can. And I've been doing a little traveling and speaking around the country lately telling other librarians how to do it, too.

So if some publishers won't sell libraries books, and self-published authors will, then libraries will start shifting their budgets away from the big houses, skipping over a whole link in the distribution chain.

If and when that happens, I think the shoe is on the other foot. It just might be the publishers, not the libraries, that can't survive the rise of the World Wide Web and the ebook.

Wouldn't it be ironic if libraries were the last ones standing?

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LaRue's Views are his own.

October 6, 2011 - yes on 1A

2011-10-06T10:09:00.000-07:00

For a long time, I didn't have any feelings about term limits one way or the other. But when Colorado adopted them I began to notice some things.

First, of course, state limits on Congressional terms were struck down by the U. S. Supreme Court in 1995. So no other state was going to have Congressional term limits. Given that the most powerful Congressional committee appointments are often made on the basis of seniority, it wouldn't serve us well for Colorado always to be the new kid.

Second, I've testified several times over the years before various state legislative committees. The difference in decorum before and after term limits was pronounced.

Before term limits, many of the senators and representatives had been there for a long time. They had relationships based on mutual trust. They understood that bills were complex and interconnected.

After term limits, that lack of history led to several unintended consequences. For one thing, in my observation, legislators were noticeably ruder to each other and the public. For another, with less time to build coalitions, legislators tended to run on a few narrow issues, make a lot of noise about them, then leave before they had to deal with the consequences.

Far too often, term limits are a lazy man's democracy. It's a system where voters want to exercise control over those in office, but aren't willing to do the work to make an informed decision. It's power without responsibility.

There are some elected officials who do a terrible job and get re-elected. There are some wonderful elected officials who get "termed out" just when they're hitting their stride. I consider both results a failure of citizenship.

On the other hand, at the local level term limits may make a little more sense, at least for some positions. For a few purely political jobs the people may want to rein in a candidate's will to power, and encourage more participation and diversity of opinion.

But other positions are more technical and professional in nature. There's an investment in training for the official that represents a real asset to the community.

This fall, Douglas County voters will be asked to extend the term limits for the Sheriff's office from two four-year terms to three. No one is trying to do away with term limits altogether, just add one term to this particular job description.

The sheriff's office is one of those technical jobs, greatly benefiting from the training of the person who holds it.

More to the point, Sheriff Dave Weaver is one of the good elected officials. He's a smart administrator who has built a good team. He pays attention and is responsive to our community.

If you don't track local law enforcement as a matter of course, spend some time on the Sheriff's website (www.dcsheriff.net). Under his leadership, the Sheriff's office has racked up an impressive record of achievement. Tossing him out has no benefit to us, and may do harm.

I represent no one but myself on this issue. But I will be voting FOR 1A. Let's make a decision this time based on the actual performance of the candidate, not because the clock struck some arbitrary hour.

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LaRue's Views are his own.

September 29, 2011 - library targets six community goals for 2012

2011-09-29T19:17:00.000-07:00

Some months ago I wrote about library staff conducting interviews with some 40+ community leaders. We asked those leaders three core questions: what issues do you think your constituents will most care about over the next couple of years? What information do you need to make important decisions? And who else should we talk to?

After gathering all that, we had another meeting to comb through it with many of the people we met with. We wanted to know whether we got things right, what we'd missed, and what else we should be thinking about.

Ultimately, we boiled down our 2012 action list to 6 items.

* Promote Douglas County businesses. We have a variety of business communities in the county. And while several of them have had local campaigns to "shop the Rock" (for instance), there's never been a comprehensive push to area residents to spend their money here in the county.

There are many advantages to such a program. Not only do those dollars keep our local citizens working, the sales tax revenues fund important regional infrastructure that helps all of us.

The library will carry this message to the Partnership of Douglas County Governments. Most economic development organizations and chambers of commerce receive strong support from both the county and local municipalities. It makes sense (and cents) to return the favor.

* Secure long term and sustainable water. The library can't solve this one. But we can help the people who work on it. We'll be assigning at least one crackerjack reference librarian to existing organizations working on water issues.

* Provide job training. There are a lot of people looking for work. Soon, we'll be announcing our partnership with Arapahoe/Douglas County Works! That's a job training center, offering a host of new skills to motivated job seekers. We will offer free space to them at our Philip S. Miller Library in Castle Rock.

* Facilitate volunteerism. This is a hot one. Lots of people are looking for a chance to "give back" to their communities. But right now it's not easy to find the opportunities. While there are many worthy organizations, potential volunteers have to go to each website, then poke around very different organizational schemes.

The library will lead an effort to make the process a little easier. Many of our high school students need to get those volunteer hours in before they can graduate.

* Celebrate civic engagement. Keying off the previous issue, the library will begin to identify some outstanding civic heroes around the county, and give them the recognition they deserve. All of our communities DO have heroes, and they deserve their moment in the sun.

* Help veterans find jobs. There are a tremendous number of service men and women returning from duty who bring extraordinary skills with them. Yet we know that many of these people have particular difficulty getting connected to local employment. In our role as information providers and community connectors, the library should be able to help with that.

Again, I want to thank the many thoughtful people in Douglas County who helped identify the important concerns we all have in common. Now it's time to get after them.
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LaRue's Views are his own.

September 22, 2011 - how to make a pigeon superstitious

2011-09-22T07:08:00.000-07:00

Every family has its oddball superstitions. That might be tossing salt over your shoulder, muttering "bread and butter" when you're briefly separated from someone by an obstacle on the sidewalk, not walking under a ladder, saying "Gesundheit" when someone sneezes, and so on.

Some of these are delightful (some families have to say "rabbit rabbit" to each other first thing on the first day of the month). And sometimes, such behaviors border on the obsessive and disturbing (like constant hand washing, or forever having to check that the oven is off).

Tracking down the origins to particular phrases can be fun, but there's a deeper question. Why do so many of us believe so many weird things?

I'm reading a book called "The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies -- How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths," by Michael Shermer.

I was surprised to read about a study by behaviorist B. F. Skinner back in the 1970s. Skinner made pigeons superstitious.

Here's how. First he put a pigeon in the eponymous Skinner box. If the pigeon pecked a key within the box, he or she got a pellet of food. It didn't take long for pigeons to figure this out. And they behaved rationally: peck the key, get food. Logical.

But then Skinner started messing with their minds. Food started dropping from the shoot randomly. That is, they still had to peck the key, but sometimes it didn't work. What the pigeons were doing wasn't significant.

But pigeons, like people, are just sure their behavior has something to do with the behavior of the universe. So if the pigeons happened to be hopping or twirling around counter-clockwise, and the food did appear, then that's what they did the next time. Twirl counter-clockwise, peck. No? Twirl counter-clockwise three times, then peck. No? Twirl SIX times....

It works. Eventually.

This resembles nothing so much as somebody playing a slot machine. It isn't logical to put so much time into some activities. Most of the time, it just isn't worth it. But the randomness of it is precisely what makes it so compelling.

Superstition is the adoption of a false belief, linking a behavior to an outcome that it has nothing to do with.

Shermer cites another example. Suppose you're walking through the African bush and the grass to your right rustles. You think, "That might be a lion," so change direction. Maybe there wasn't a lion, but you're still alive.

Or suppose you say, "Nah, it's fine," and there is a lion, and suddenly you're a juicy food pellet dropping randomly into nature's Skinner box.

Better to believe every breeze is a predator, even if it makes you seem a little jumpy.

Shermer's idea is this: it's not that we're wired to believe odd things. It's that we're wired to believe, period. We try to figure things out. We make meaning. We look for patterns and intelligence around us, and constantly modify our behavior to optimize the odds of our success.

Sometimes, those beliefs really can and do save our lives. Sometimes they're just silly.

On the other hand, when you make too much soup out of too few ingredients, it gets a little thin. Skinner oversimplified a lot of things in his psychological theories, and there's more to our minds than stimulus and response. I think.

But I love it that pigeons can be taught to be superstitious. Here's what I don't know. Can they be cured?

Can we?

--
LaRue's Views are his own.

September 8, 2011 - library ready for recession

2011-09-08T06:24:00.000-07:00

The story of the library's response to the recession has two dimensions.

The recession began in the private sector in fall of 2008. As jobs disappeared, more and more people used the library. This was true all across the country, and has been well-documented.

People borrowed what they could no longer afford to buy. They used libraries to sharpen their resumes, look for jobs, apply for jobs online. Sometimes, they came to the library just to find a place where there were other friendly people.

Despite that increased demand, city-based libraries (like Denver Public, Aurora, Englewood) saw immediate loss of revenue. They get their money from the city's general revenue, which tends to have a large component of sales tax money. When people buy less, cities have less money. Because of this, many municipal libraries are in big trouble.

The Douglas County Libraries, as an independent library district, gets most of its money from property taxes. And property taxes are indexed to an assessment year, typically with an 18 month delay. That is, 2012 tax collections will be based on assessments made in June of last year. (For more information on the process, see www.douglas.co.us/assessor/Property_Assessment_and_Taxes.html.)

Since appraisals happen in odd-numbered years, but are based on the year before, all property tax-based public institutions have a pretty good idea what's coming. So the library knew at the beginning of 2009 that we would see the results of the 2008 recession in 2012. (And not in 2010, since the recession happened after the June appraisals.)

We didn't know exactly what the hit would be. For a while, estimates varied from as low as an 8% drop in revenues next year to as high as 20%. Now they seem to be settling into about a 10% decline.

So we got ready. Douglas County Libraries had already invested in self-check and automated return systems. We set some budget reduction goals. The big one: through attrition, not layoffs, we would reduce our headcount. In fact, we eliminated whole job descriptions. We reorganized around each staff departure, applying various benchmarks to get more and more efficient and productive.

And it worked. As of 2011, we have achieved the staffing levels we had in 2006, without a single layoff. At the same time, our level of business has increased by over 54%. In fact, according the July/August edition of the American Libraries magazine, on the basis of circulation (checkouts) per capita we are the sixth busiest library in the United States.

So that's the first dimension of our story: sound planning and good stewardship. We don't anticipate a funding crisis next year because we used the time to plan for it. Libraries are pretty good at that.

The second dimension is about the jobs themselves. For the past couple of years, we have replaced some vacancies, but almost always with internal people. We've only gone out into the job market for things we didn't have a lot of people qualified to do -- mostly IT positions.

The good news is that this internal focus allowed us to identify a lot of bright and ambitious staff who wanted to move up. We put together and took advantage of a couple of leadership development programs. I have no doubt that we boosted a good dozen people's library careers.

But the bad news is that we have remained pretty closed to the rest of the library world. When jobs do come open, even for the non-professional positions, we get inundated with applications. Many are over-qualified: fine for us, demoralizing for them.

Right now, a lot of fine librarians have completed their master's degrees and can't find work.

It's good to spend time developing one's staff. But at some point, institutions also require an infusion of new blood. Here's hoping the economy turns around soon.

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LaRue's Views are his own.

September 1, 2011 - Castle Pines keeps a good thing going

2011-09-01T12:46:00.000-07:00

Sept. 1, 2011 - Castle Pines keeps a good thing going

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the formation of several Midwestern libraries.

The call always began within the community. Libraries, particularly during the late 1800s, were seen as one of the ways by which a community "came of age."

Douglas County mostly followed the same pattern, with local city residents organizing, finding space, volunteering, and ultimately opening the libraries in Castle Rock and Parker, although the modest funding came from the entire county. Over time, the establishment of the Douglas County Libraries as an independent district changed that a little. The larger population centers were pretty well set.

After some election losses in 2007 and 2008, and the anticipated fall of property tax revenues after the recession, it looked like the library district generally would have to shrink. We did close our satellite in Cherry Valley.

We proposed closing Louviers, too. But the good citizens there immediately stepped up and showed how much the library mattered to them. At this point, they fundraise more each year than they pay in taxes -- an extraordinary commitment. If they stand by us, we stand by them.

In Castle Pines, committed citizens even managed to establish a new library there, in a rented storefront. That effort had several components: first, we sold our aging bookmobile, so did have some staff and materials to transfer. Second, the Castle Pines Metro District had purchased some land from us. We plowed that money back into the community. Finally, some local residents, members of the Castle Pines Chamber of Commerce, and others helped negotiate a deal that covered our rental costs for two years. We have three years left on our lease.

As part of local community efforts to help us keep underwriting this new facility, the citizen-led Castle Pines Library Campaign (including Warren Lynge, Carla Kenny, Sharon Kollmar, Linda Day, Joan Millspaugh, Sarah Tweed, Vicky Kellen, Darren Everett, Lisa Crockett, and Terri Wiebold) has started fundraising.

And right out of the gate, they found their first donor: the city of Castle Pines itself.

On Tuesday, August 9, the Castle Pines City Council approved a $50,000 contribution to the support of Castle Pines Library for the next three years. Half of the amount, or $25,000, will be in the form of an immediate gift to the library, while half will be contributed in 2012 pending private contributions in an equal amount.

The committee's slogan -- "Let's keep a good thing going!" -- resonated with Mayor Jeffrey Huff and other members of the city council, whose vote in favor of the gift to the library was unanimous.

This is how communities are made: the combination of vision, dedication, and local investment.

To celebrate this commitment, the library will host a check-signing ceremony at 10 a.m., Sept. 7, at the Castle Pines Library. Mayor Huff and Library Board of Trustees President Amy Hunt will have a few words to say. Our emcee will be Darren Everett.

In addition to a little speechifying, interested parties may hear about some other ways to donate or sponsor the mighty little library. Or call the Castle Pines Chamber of Commerce at 303-688-3359, the Castle Pines Library at 303-791-7323, or go to DouglasCountyLibraries.org and click on "Donate it!"

Once again, thank you City of Castle Pines for such an amazing and generous gift to “Keep a Good Thing Going.”

We hope to see you on the 7th.

August 25, 2011 - moving up the organization

2011-08-25T14:27:00.000-07:00

I am annually reviewed by my bosses, a 7-person board. A few years ago one board member asked me what I was doing about succession planning.

I thought, "Uh oh." Was this code for, "pick your replacement, bub, you're outa here?"

But in fact, to that board member, "succession planning" meant something far broader and more significant.

Here's the idea in my own words, but very much derived from that board member's deep professional experience in organizational development work:

It all starts at the top. The governing body sets strategic directions. It has a goal or goals. And yes, I know that some governing bodies never get around to that, squandering their time on little operational issues. But a healthy organization has leadership that maps out a path to the future.

The board then looks at its Chief Executive Officer. Does that person have the skills to achieve the goals? If so, dandy.

If not, what would it take to help that person acquire the necessary skills in a timely fashion? That becomes the "development plan" for the employee. If the CEO isn't within 18 months of having the skills necessary to get things done, the board may have the wrong CEO.

But it doesn't stop there. Now the CEO does the same thing.

At the next level of the organization there are people who may be within 18 months of doing the CEO job, too. What skills do THEY need? Once again, that gap in knowledge or experience becomes the list of annual development objectives.

When I've talked about this to others, sometimes people express surprise. Why would a CEO train up his or her own competitors?

The answer, to my mind, is pretty straightforward: because the job of the CEO is to help the institution succeed. The more smart, capable people on hand to fulfill overarching goals, the more likely that is to happen, particularly if they combine their efforts.

And note that this is not about anointing a single successor. It's about creating more than one potential candidate for key positions. It's about assembling a "bench" of people who are actively getting better, improving their potential organizational value through purposeful learning.

But it doesn't stop there, either. At every level of the organization, supervisors should be doing the same thing.

The skill set for a front line supervisor might well be different than those required of a CEO or senior executive staff. But whatever the level, the necessary skills are identifiable, and there's a list of strategies -- training, formal education, task force work, external partnerships, mentoring, and so on -- that help people acquire those skills.

It is the job of every supervisor to know what skills their people need in order to align with organization goals, and to put together annual plans, specific to each individual, to help everyone move up in knowledge and ability.

Ultimately, this process of assessing skills and building annual learning programs should touch every person in the organization, top to bottom.

Organizations have to be careful not to identify just one person for too many slots. Often, a single golden child gets groomed for several positions -- but when the time comes, he or she can take only one of them. The "bench" needs to be deep.

This system of staff development -- and indeed, of system-wide personnel management -- is also an honorable thing to do for employees. It keeps them engaged in their jobs and careers, keeps them interested, keeps them excited by keeping them growing.

But what if one of these people you invested in takes a job somewhere else?

My response: how wonderful for them! Now you have high-performing friends and colleagues who deeply appreciate the help you gave them. And they might come back to you later, even more able and experienced.

In the long run, such an organization gets a reputation for offering lots of opportunity, and for moving people up quickly. That, in turn, attracts brighter and more ambitious applicants.

So in the end, the right reaction to talk of "succession planning" isn't "uh oh." It's "ah ha!"

--
LaRue's Views are his own.

August 4, 2011 - popular reading builds community

2011-08-04T07:19:00.000-07:00

"Main Street Public Library" is a forthcoming book by Wayne Wiegand, an eminent library historian. It's the story of four public libraries - Bryant Library in Sauk Centre (Central MN), Sage Public library in Osage, IA, Charles H. Moore Library in Lexington MI, Rhinelander Public Library in Rhinelander, WI.

The public library movement, beginning in about 1876, was in many ways the response to waves of "foreigners." As Wiegand notes, nervous Americans adopted two strategies to regularize the newcomers: compulsory education, and such highly visible institutions as the public library.

The four libraries followed a pattern that applied to a lot of Midwest libraries. It went something like this:

A core group of civic leaders, usually radiating from pre-suffrage women's groups, issued a civic call. Some modest amount of funding was committed by town councils. A tiny start-up space was found, with a non-librarian and a small stock of "good books."

Eventually, someone hit up Andrew Carnegie, who ignored the request for awhile, then dickered over the price, then eventually provided capital funds -- but never for books, and never for operations. This strategy of requiring matching funds, proof of serious intent, had the effect of growing organized support essential for the establishment and sustainability of the library.

Over time library management became a little more professionalized. Library Trustees looked for "trained" librarians. Libraries that thrived -- meaning that they wound up with more space and money -- built relationships with their communities in three ways: children's services (mainly story times), the provision of public meeting space (both for individual reading and group gatherings), and, most powerfully, response to the demand for popular fiction.

With ringing and lofty rhetoric, librarians assured all that we were essential to democracy because we informed our citizens about the issues of the day. Indeed, this organized presentation of information, reliable, thoroughly reviewed and vetted, was the essential function of the institution. As the profession grew in stature, "collection development" meant the compilation and distribution of prescriptive lists. Those lists did indeed influence many libraries' holdings.

The anti-fiction hostility of librarians was pronounced. Many librarians sounded the alarm about the dangers of, yes, reading. Oh, the horror of women who read romances, boys who read comic books, and men who stashed the Police Gazette under their mattresses!

That prejudice lasted a long time, extending with particular ferocity against the Stratemeyer Syndicate (producers of the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew series).

But despite the civic mandate of local leaders, despite the profound anti-fiction bias of librarians of that time, there was a third player in the histories. It turns out that what people mostly wanted from the public library wasn't heavy-handed educational lectures. They wanted a rattling good story.

And by and large, they got it.

Wiegand advances the idea that libraries did in fact do what they were supposed to do: we built community. We just didn't do it the way we thought we did. Popular reading itself was the key.

Think about it. Which had more to do with the emergence of the American pscyhe: "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," or the by-his-own-bootstraps fiction of Horatio Alger? Which had more to do with national scientific progress: "Scientific American," or the inventions of Tom Swift? Who had more to do with our attitudes about gun ownership: Alexis de Toqueville, or Zane Grey?

Sometimes it's hard to tell if history teaches us anything or not. But I'm happy to pass along this professional update from your local librarian: go ahead and read. Really. Anything. For the good of the nation.

--
LaRue's Views are his own.

July 28, 2011 - who needs libraries?

2011-07-28T11:10:00.000-07:00

In the words of that great sage, Yogi Berra, "You can observe a lot just by watching."

Recently I met with some library colleagues to visit a remodeled branch in Colorado Springs. Then we talked about all the projects we're working on. It's a useful exercise. Colorado librarians are pretty honest about what does and doesn't work.

When you listen to all the details about a library - its demographics, its funding, its politics, its mix of staff and services - it's easy to think that each one is utterly unique.

Yet we do face common problems. One of them is the propagation of a "meme" -- an idea that wants to get repeated. That meme takes the form of "who needs libraries now that I have the Internet/an e-reader?"

Many libraries in Colorado and around the country have undertaken some very successful branding efforts. They buff up their logos, hone their tag lines, and sometimes, for awhile, succeed in getting a little local buzz.

But then we're on to the next thing. Libraries have so many services that we get a little distracted. Meanwhile, the idea that libraries have somehow become obsolete winds up on the lips even of the people who visit us three times a week, and complain about the inability to find a parking space.

So I suggested to my colleagues that maybe we're more alike than we know. Instead of focusing on what we do different, maybe we should talk more about the three ways we are very much alike.

At the heart of the public library is the notion of community sharing. We are a cooperative purchasing agreement. Whether funded by sales or property taxes, public libraries take many small contributions of money, and leverage that into the purchase of collections, or access to collections, that are far beyond what any of us could afford individually.

You've got an ebook reader? Wonderful! But it doesn't take long to run up a big bill on Amazon or the Barnes and Noble bookstores. You can spend in half an hour what you don't spend in a year for your library. The library can provide books for your e-reader, too.

The argument is pretty straightforward: libraries are way more cost-effective than buying everything yourself, most of which you really don't want to keep anyhow. Just because the book is electronic doesn't change the value proposition. Teaming up - buying once, using many times - is a smart investment.

A second way we're alike is that we help individuals of any and all ages and backgrounds to explore and discover anything they like. Sometimes, they come to us because they need something for school or for their jobs.

But more often, they come because they're following their own interests. That might be learning a new language, or building a porch, or growing a garden, or learning to play banjo. Or it might be just reading science fiction or murder mysteries or romances or browsing fashion magazines. Public libraries are a patriot's dream: We are all about the pursuit of happiness.

A third way we're alike is that we build community. Libraries generate traffic. Last year our 7 locations in Douglas County racked up over 2 million visits. People come to homeowner's meetings, children's story times, civic clubs, and evening programs. They meet friends and associates. They chat with each other as they wait to use public computers. They get out of their homes and get to know one another.

So it's ironic. Often the busiest place in town, a place where people can follow their interests, save heaps of money, and build enduring bonds with their neighbors, libraries still have to fight the false perception that no one needs them.

Once again, Yogi nailed it. "Nobody goes there any more," he said. "It's too crowded."

--
LaRue's Views are his own.

July 21, 2011 - grandparents matter

2011-07-21T10:06:00.000-07:00

Who I am has a lot to do with my granddad. He dropped out of school in 10th grade to take care of an invalid mother, but spent the rest of his life reading and thinking. He's one of only two people I know who read the entire 11 volumes of Will and Ariel Durant's "The Story of Civilization." I got my love of books from him.

He loved debate, and was willing to take unpopular positions if he believed in them. He was the first person I met who would talk enthusiastically about any topic: religion, politics, history, sex. While he appreciated a good argument, he didn't seem to have much ego attached to it. He just wanted to learn something, either about an idea or about another human being. Ideas and people interested him.

Aside from the example he set me - curious, engaged, friendly - he also did something else. He told me I was smart.

It happens, in my home, that that was a powerful thing. I got a different message from my father.

But sometimes, when you get a clear and positive acknowledgement from someone you admire, it can save you. My granddad's respect for me became one of the foundations upon which my self-image was built. He made a difficult childhood easier. Grandparents matter.

And if you’re a grandparent, you can learn to be a better one.

I've written before about OLLI - the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Denver. In brief, OLLI offers three terms per year of classes. Each term lasts 8 weeks. You can sign up for an unlimited number of classes for just $100 per term.

The main audience for the programs is people over 50. The classes address everything from literature and writing to science, technology and math, from language workshops to current events. Fun!

OLLI has three locations: OLLI South serves the Douglas County area. It's located at 11004 Wildfield Lane, Littleton (off Santa Fe, near Titan). OLLI Central serves Metro Denver, and OLLI West serves the Golden area.

The new term is about to start up. For more information, call 720-339-1379, or look them up at www.universitycollege.du.edu/olli.

One of those classes is taught by a couple of friends of mine, Frank and Dix Morris. It's called "Discover the Power of Presuppositions."

The course offering states, "There is a general assumption that senior citizens are loving (they're nice, give gifts and, possibly, leave an inheritance). A close study of the most effective seniors reveals them to be masters of communication who know how to effectively instill major messages."

The class provides left and right brain methods for thoughtfully placing affirming messages in the minds of others.

Class time includes concrete explanations, class dialog, examples of each new powerful phrase, take home material and simple assignments to be used with others so class members can experience how presuppositions actually work.

Explanation: "A presupposition assumes a reality before it has been proven." For example, if a teacher says to children on the first day of class that they will be an excellent group of learners, they will take that to mind. They'll try to live up to it.

Grandparents do this with grandkids. Great leaders use presuppositions all the time. As the Morrises tell me, the class could have been called "How to be highly effective in all relationships."

The class is on Tuesday mornings.

So whether you've got grandkids, are looking to make the world a little brighter, or just want to scratch an intellectual itch, why not investigate OLLI's offerings? You can get a sample of what they're like at four upcoming sessions:

Monday, August 1
10 am Tattered Cover at 9315 Dorchester St in Highlands Ranch
1 pm Lone Tree Library at 8827 Lone Tree Pkwy in Lone Tree.

Friday, August 5
10 am Parker Library at 10851 S Crossroads Dr in Parker
1 pm Phillip S Miller Library at 100 S. Wilcox in Castle Rock

--
LaRue's Views are his own.

July 14, 2011 - on the empathy of apes

2011-07-14T08:08:00.000-07:00

It's been said so many times we believe it. It's a dog-eat-dog world. Survival of the fittest. Whether it's life in the wild or in the marketplace, competition and self-interest is what drives us.

But what are we to make of this? In 1964, a group of psychiatrists led by Jules Masserman at Northwestern University reported in the American Journal of Psychiatry that "rhesus monkeys refused to pull a chain that delivered food to themselves if doing so gave a shock to a companion. One monkey stopped pulling the chain for 12 days after witnessing another monkey receive a shock. Those primates were literally starving themselves to avoid shocking another animal." (See the magazine "Greater Good," Fall/Winter 2005-06.)

Or consider this report by Franz B. M. de Waal, a Dutch psychologist, primatologist and ethologist, on another primate study in Taï National Park, in Ivory Coast. "... chimpanzees took care of group mates wounded by leopards, licking their blood, carefully removing dirt, and waving away flies that came near the wounds. They protected injured companions, and slowed down during travel in order to accommodate them."

Isn't such behavior counter-intuitive? Wouldn't more chimps survive if they simply abandoned the wounded?

No. de Waal goes on, "All of this makes perfect sense given that chimpanzees live in groups for a reason, the same way wolves and humans are group animals for a reason. If man is wolf to man, he is so in every sense, not just the negative one. We would not be where we are today had our ancestors been socially aloof."

de Waal has written many fascinating articles and books. Douglas County Libraries has several of them, including "The age of empathy: Nature's lessons for a kinder society" published in 2009, "Primates and philosophers: how morality evolved," published in 2006, and "Animal social complexity: intelligence, culture and individualized societies," published in 2005.

He can turn a phrase. "What we need is a complete overhaul of assumptions about human nature. Too many economists and politicians model human society on the perpetual struggle they believe exists in nature, but which is a mere projection. Like magicians, they first throw their ideological prejudices into the hat of nature, then pull them out by their very ears to show how much nature agrees with them. It’s a trick for which we have fallen for too long. Obviously, competition is part of the picture, but humans can’t live by competition alone."

It's not all sweetness and light in the jungle, whether floral or concrete. Chimpanzees sometimes turn murderously violent. I remember the rage and acting out of my own adolescence.

Yet apes empathize. Research suggests they also mourn, laugh, and reconcile.

Of course, anyone who has ever owned a cat, a dog, or even a bird knows that emotions are not unique to humans.

Or as de Wall puts it, “We start out postulating sharp boundaries, such as between humans and apes, or between apes and monkeys, but are in fact dealing with sand castles that lose much of their structure when the sea of knowledge washes over them. They turn into hills, leveled ever more, until we are back to where evolutionary theory always leads us: a gently sloping beach.”

---
LaRue's Views are his own.

July 7, 2011 - spellbinders

2011-07-07T12:02:00.000-07:00

[This column is by Priscilla Queen, a Literacy Specialist for the Douglas County Libraries.]

A few weeks ago, in a letter to the editor, Irma Backelant asked, “Have grandparents become the nuisance generation?” She described feeling like an outsider when her grown children’s friends complained about the annoyance their parents have become. Backelant realized that the complaints were being made about her fellow grandparents, and was aghast at their being ridiculed rather than valued as the elder generation.

Last year I became a grandmother myself and hope to figure out how to be helpful and wise in this new role. Mrs. Backelant’s question also spurred me to respond and share a few programs and activities that Douglas County Libraries offers the community to the benefit of children and elders alike: Spellbinders and Book Start.

Traditional stories demonstrate that elders can be a source of wisdom and perspective for younger generations. They also illustrate the consequences of rash and callow behavior by the young, as in this old German tale:

There was once a very old man whose eyes had grown dim, his ears dull of hearing. His knees trembled. When he sat at table he could hardly hold his spoon and spilled broth upon the tablecloth. His son and his son’s wife were disgusted at this, so the old grandfather sat in the corner behind the stove. They gave him meager food in an earthenware bowl. He looked to the table with his eyes full of tears. Once he dropped the bowl and it broke. The young wife scolded him. He said nothing, but only sighed. After that they brought his food in a wooden bowl that could not break.

One day there were sitting thus when the little grandson of four began to gather some bits of wood upon the ground. “What are you doing there?” asked the father. “I am making a trough,” answered the child, “for you and Mother to eat out of when I am big.”

The man and his wife looked at each other, and began to cry. Then they took the old grandfather to the table, and henceforth let him eat with them, and likewise said nothing if he did spill a little of anything.

Spellbinders was developed precisely to give older folks a positive role in their communities. Spellbinders tell stories to classrooms of children, recreating the age-old custom of storytelling on the front porch or around a fire. The children who listen to the stories of our Spellbinders reap the benefits of a rich literacy activity.

Spellbinders volunteers are 55 or older because one goal is to connect generations and provide an experience with a grandparent for school-aged children. Children have thanked our Spellbinders with heartfelt enthusiasm. One boy wrote, “My grandpa doesn’t live close. Thank you for being my grandpa for a day.”

Spellbinders develop traditional folktales or create new stories from personal anecdotes. Douglas County Libraries Literacy Department and Douglas County School District have partnered to offer this free classroom enrichment to teachers and school librarians. It is a unique opportunity that supports literacy in many ways. Spellbinders also enjoy camaraderie with each other through regular meetings and other events in the community.

Book Start is another intergenerational volunteer program giving children the experiences that show that “adults in my community care about me.” This program provides training in current early literacy techniques and places volunteers with local child care facilities where they read aloud weekly. Preschool age children are in a vital time of language development. Science shows that if those early years are filled with playful words and a love of books, children have much improved chances for later success in school. Our training will show you how to blend beautifully written books with simple songs and fingerplays you might have thought you forgot. Book Start volunteers discover that reading aloud with young children makes a big difference in the lives of both generations.

We all have a need to be respected in our older years. If you are looking for opportunities to become that wise elder, to engage with the younger generation and stay young at heart, please consider volunteering in one or both of our literacy programs.

Spellbinder training is scheduled for August 1, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and August 5, 9 a.m. to noon. The 10-hour training will be held at Philip S. Miller Library in Castle Rock; you must attend both sessions. Please contact Priscilla Queen at pqueen@dclibraries.org or 303-688-7626 for more information and to register.

The next Book Start training is scheduled for Wednesday, July 20, 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and another on August 17th, 9:30-12:30 both at Philip S. Miller Library in Castle Rock. Please contact Geri Domareck, gdomareck@dclibraries.org, for more information and to register.

June 30, 2011 - a fair flower comes to Castle Rock

2011-06-30T10:15:00.000-07:00

This is the story of two beginnings.

The first concerns the house at 404 Perry Street in Castle Rock. It was built in 1888, apparently by stone mason H. B. Remington. The next owner, the first one to live in it, was Washington Irving Whittier, a well known teacher, editor, postmaster, realtor, legislator, and circuit-riding minister. Whittier was a cousin of American poet John Greenleaf Whittier.

In 1890 he sold the house to James Woods, another school teacher, and by all accounts an excellent debater. (There were debating and literary societies in those days). His wife and two sisters opened a dress making business in the house.

From 1895 to 1902, it was owned by William Thayer, another debater, an elected Castle Rock Trustee, and a train dispatcher. Then the house went to a saloon-keeper, carpenter, concrete, plastering and masonry business operator named George Burk.

People had a surprising mix of skills back then. They had to, I suppose.

The house continued to change hands, but over the years, was home to several other businesses, among them Elegant Edibles, Casual Catering, and a bike shop.

The second beginning concerns the new business opening there. The name of the shop is Finn*Lafleur. It will be an art and fashion gallery. The fashion is hip, European, and will feature hats, belts, shoes, and soon, furniture.

The business gets its name from Carlos Finn, 36, and his 29-year old sister Desiree and her husband William Lafleur. "Finn" is Irish for fair, and "Lafleur" is French for flower. So the shop's name means "Fair Flower."

Carlos (Carlos Michael Finn) tends bar at Next Door, and has long been associated with an art gallery cooperative in Denver. He's also a painter, creating what he calls "primitive, naive, child-influenced" pieces. His art will be on display.

His sister has mostly worked in the oil and gas industry, but she and Carlos used to work at the Pinos restaurant together (now the Union). William, known as Billy, is an assistant supervisor at the Red Hawk Golf Course.

I do a lot of walking around Castle Rock, and happened to poke my head into the house one early June evening to see what all the bustle was. Carlos, Desiree and Billy were transforming the house.

Although they are renters, they have put a lot of sweat equity into the place. Gone was the old carpeting, revealing a lovely old hardwood floor. They restored it. With pride, they showed me around the freshly painted little house. They have constructed benches, installed track lighting, made a dressing room, and covered up old pipes. It looks great.

The shop had a soft launch on June 18, during the downtown's car show. They're still tweaking their hours, but will probably be open something like 10-7 most days. They'll want to be open on weekend,s so may close on Mondays.

The history of the house (and its additions, not treated here) comes from the Douglas County History Research Center, located within the Philip S. Miller Library. We have lots of fascinating research about the people and buildings in the area.

The history of the Finns and Lafleurs comes from just talking to these industrious and ambitious Douglas County natives (Carlos and Desiree grew up around Santa Fe and Titan Road, then in town). They're all smart, personable, and interesting folks.

I like the way things come back around. Multi-skilled and ambitious people take a gamble, and add another layer of memories to a building. What was a dress shop is now kind of a dress shop again. And history is still being made.

---
LaRue's Views are his own.

June 23, 2011 - where's your music, kid?

2011-06-23T05:27:00.000-07:00

"Send me a kiss by wire / baby my heart's on fire...
Baby telephone / tell me I'm your own."

I don't want to start any fights. I'm a low key, nonconfrontational kind of guy. But I can't help but notice things.

And what I've noticed is that this current generation doesn't have its own music.

Sure, it has Beyoncé and Lady Gaga, etc. It has a lot of GOOD music, no question. But throughout American history, it seems like each generation comes up with its unique sound, a musical genre that is distinctive and definitive. Until now.

At the turn of the 20th century we got ragtime (Scott Joplin). Then came jazz. Then the Memphis blues. Big bands (Benny Goodman was named the King of Swing in 1935). Mahalia Jackson popularized gospel in 1947. Pete Seeger ushered in the folk revival in 1948, which branched in many directions.

Rock and roll was born in 1951, Elvis, Ray Charles and Soul Music in 1955, Motown in 1959. Reggae in 1960. Patsy Cline in 1961. The Beatles in 1964. Woodstock in 1969.

In 1975 we got punk rock. In 1977 we got disco. 1978 brought us hip hop. MTV rose in 1981. Michael Jackson's Thriller happened in 1985.

In 1990 Grunge rock slithered out of Seattle. In 2003, Eminem got a Grammy for best rap album.

And that seems to be it. The last distinct American sound, shared broadly by a whole generation, was rap.

Further back, in 1987, the term "world music" was coined to describe "eclectic" music. That was one year after Paul Simon's breakout "Graceland," featuring Ladysmith Black Mambazo.

Since then, a lot has happened technologically. And technology definitely affects music. (See the "Hello my baby" lyrics at the top of this column.) Nowadays, the Internet is the biggest factor. The sheer availability of music has soared.

In 2008, digital downloads grew by 25% to $3.7 billion (including 1.4 billion songs), accounting for 20% of music sales. But according to some sources, over 40 billion songs were illegally file-shared, which means that 95% of music downloads are illegal. By 2009, digital sales accounted for 98% of all singles sold in the USA and Britain.

Add in Youtube and Pandora, and you don't even have to break the law to hear sounds from everywhere.

Don't get me wrong. There are a lot of terrific bands and musicians around. There's no shortage of music. I hear great rock and roll, fusion, ska, blues, folk, funk, and on and on, all over the place. Successful musicals are back on Broadway.

But what I don't hear is that sudden shift in rhythm or consciousness that says a new form of music has been birthed on our shores.

So here's what I think. A distinct musical sound is always of its time and place. It's a focused reaction to a particular moment in history. And right now, a generation raised on what amounts to a global radio station has so much to digest, so many different influences, that it hasn't been able, yet, to come up with a distillation.

Music has gone global, and it will take us awhile to make sense of it.

Am I wrong? Is there a new kind of music that has in fact caught on, is shared widely in our culture? Write me at jlarue at jlarue.com.

----
LaRue's Views are his own.

June 16, 2011 - when electrons revolt

2011-06-16T07:47:00.000-07:00

When I was growing up, there was a guy in the neighborhood whose family made him go into the garage every time there was a storm. He attracted lightning.

You've probably known people who can't wear watches. The watches start running backwards, or stop and start unpredictably.

I've never been one of those people. Until recently. Lately, electricity and I don't seem to get along.

I remember looking at old catalogs from the early 1900s. You could buy all kinds of household appliances that had their own motors. Later, they had attachments so you could hook up a motor to them. Finally, appliances just came with power cords, because by then, there was an electric grid. Electricity had gone from fad to utility.

I suppose that's kind of like the Internet today, with wireless processors embedded in everything.

The two trends together are dangerous.

It all started for me when I got notified (via email) that someone had contacted my credit card company and succeeded in changing the account's email and billing address. It wasn't me, so I spent a morning on the phone as they walked me through new security settings. Then I got a call from someone claiming to be from the credit card company who wanted to know if I changed the settings ok, and to what, and suddenly asking a lot of questions without answering any of mine. Finally, I said I'd better call THEM back -- and they hung up. When I did phone the company's fraud department, they said they knew nothing about that call.

Then, on the way to the airport, my wife's mobile phone cut out. She asked me to plug it into the cigarette lighter. It not only didn't charge the phone, it short-circuited the car's air conditioning.

Then the library was moving its servers from the somewhat dicey power in downtown Castle Rock to a big server farm in Denver (co-located in Phoenix). But naturally, that meant that our catalog and other databases went wonky for a few days, to the great confusion of many of our patrons.

When I got back from my trip, I then tried to cancel that credit card (which I'd kept restricted but active in case I got stranded). No problem, they said, but fax in a bunch of stuff to prove you are who you say you are. Fine, I said.

But could I get a fax machine to work? After repeating the same steps 6 times, then watching the machine dial all by itself, chortling at me I swear, yes.

Then my home Internet went down. I'd reboot everything, and it would work, kind of, for whole seconds at a time. Then stagger into partial screen draws.

I've really gotten used to immediate Internet access. My daughter depends on it for her job (giving international English lessons).

When I called my provider to troubleshoot, the handset died halfway through the session. Dead battery.

When I got the home network up and running again, my computer's keyboard would suddenly go mute every now and then, requiring me to un- and re-plug it.

Don't even get me started about flight attendants who tell you to turn off your book, which then won't turn on again.

I totally believe in the myth of Atlantis. How could a whole, advanced civilization just disappear one day, you ask?

Simple. They got everything they needed to do, everything they needed to know, scrunched into a single, wafer-thin, electric-powered gizmo. And somebody dropped it, or it went on the fritz, or, I don't know, it got hit by lightning.

I'll be in the garage.

--
LaRue's Views are his own.

June 9, 2011 - laugh when you fall

2011-06-09T20:48:00.000-07:00

On that glorious morning, many groups of true believers gathered in many places, confident that the end of the world was at hand.

How many people? Estimates vary between 25,000 all the way up to over a million.

They came from all over the world, and included people from many Christian denominations.

There had been an earlier prediction, but the prophet recalculated, and confidently advanced another date. This time would be different.

It's important to understand this truth: People believed him. Often, the belief was deep, fervent, and utterly sincere. Some followers had already sold or simply abandoned all their belongings.

And what happened?

It's hard to soften this. The true believers were wrong.

Incidentally, I am not talking about Harold Camping's prediction of the Rapture, due, according to HIS second calculations, to take place on May 21, 2011. Although that didn't happen either.

I'm talking about the "Millerites," the followers of William Miller, who predicted that the second coming of Christ would happen precisely on October 22, 1844.

Why do so many of us have a yearning to know that this is It, that the end is nigh, that now we'll get what's coming to us, good and bad alike?

I don't know. But I do know that in both cases there was a next morning.

How did the faithful respond?

According to author Kathryn Schulz in her fascinating book "Being Wrong," people have pretty consistent responses to being caught out in error.

At one end is total denial. Appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, there was no mistake. Indeed, many Millerites asserted that Christ had indeed arrived, but not physically. Rather, he had entered the hearts of his followers.

Advantage: it's hard to prove that that didn't happen. Disadvantage: there's not a lot of proof that it did.

Others responded with a partial denial. OK, the specific date wasn't right. But it was almost right. The Second Coming was ... delayed.

Out of the Millerites came the Seventh Day Adventists. There's also a connection to the Jehovah's Witnesses. Even faith adapts.

At the far end of the continuum some people concluded that they had made not just one mistake, but lots of them. Some Millerites gave up organized religion; others abandoned the very idea of God and the Bible.

Somewhere in the middle, Schulz said, there's the usual "downplaying, hedging, backpedaling, justifying, or otherwise minimizing the scope of our mistakes."

We just hate to be wrong. Adults do, anyhow.

But here's the interesting thing. When you look back on the time of greatest human growth, the time when we are consummate learning machines, we are wrong almost all the time.

You don't think so? Have you ever watched a pre-toddler learning to walk? Stand. Fall. Step. Fall. Turn around. Fall. Reach for something. Fall. Try to speak. Get it wrong. Try to exercise control over basic bodily functions. Fail.

Yet children learn. with astonishing speed. They are "right" more and more often.

And how do we explain this? Children, making one mistake after another, laugh way more than adults. I've seen some studies asserting that adults laugh 15 times a day, but children laugh up to 300 times.

And that's another response to getting things wrong. Laughter.

When you laugh, it doesn't mean that you're cruel, or judgmental, or that you find everyone else stupid.

It just means that the world is funny, and that it's a miracle that anything ever works the way you think it will.

---
LaRue's Views are his own.

June 2, 2011 - can we crowd-source the collection?

2011-06-02T07:27:00.000-07:00

Let's start with the numbers. According to the 5/18/2011 issue of Publishers Weekly, in 2010 the commercial publishing houses in America produced 5% more titles than the year before. The count: 316,480 titles.

But non-traditional publishing -- mostly print-on-demand public domain and self-published titles -- rose to a staggering 2,766,260.

Since 2002, production of traditional books rose by 47%. Non-traditional production rose by 8,460%. As of last year, commercial publishing is only a little over 11% of the total.

The job of the library is to gather, organize, and publicly present the intellectual content of our culture. But the mechanisms used by libraries to do that are a poor match for this explosion of literature.

The truth is, most public library processes are about gatekeeping: we try to assure, in advance, the quality or at least the popular demand for titles we purchase for our collection.

How? Well, commercial publishers let us know six months in advance what's coming. We read lots of review magazines, where people thumb through those early copies to let us know if they're worth the money. We track bestseller lists.

But self-publishing doesn't work like that. Independent publishers and authors may or may not have catalogs of upcoming works. Traditionally, they've had a hard time getting picked up by review magazines, too. Often, the independents didn't produce enough copies for national distribution.

But add in e-publishing, and "distribution" gets much simpler. Publishers and authors just have to upload one file to one server.

So I have an idea. To enable our public to try to sample this rich, untapped world of new writing, all we have to do is flip our processes upside down. We'll let YOU decide what our community should buy.

Since the end of 2010, the Douglas County Libraries has set up a powerful new infrastructure, one of the first in the nation. We can now receive, catalog, and manage electronic books ourselves.

Suppose we let authors and publishers upload their books to our catalog. Any author. Any publisher. It's just a simple online form. They would create a record that might not be up to our usual cataloging standards, but would suffice to help people find it. Our new system will let our patrons, at their sole discretion, remember what books they read, and start recommending other books to them on that basis. A combination of that recommendation engine, plus virtual displays of e-content, plus mobile apps to put all of that in the palm of your hand, would make browsing our collection a lot of fun.

And patrons can rate everything they read, and even leave comments. Which other people can respond to.

Here's the twist. Somewhere down the line - six months, for instance - we consult our statistics. If a title hasn't been checked out at least three times, and if our readers haven't rated it at least 3 stars out of 5, we delete the file. Our community doesn't like it.

But if it did get used, and it did get rated well, then we buy it. In other words, we "crowd-source" our collection development to the people who pay for it: Douglas County taxpayers. We provide the technical system to sample and present the writing; you tell us what's worth keeping.

Now let me be clear about something: this process is going to mean we'll see a lot of wild stuff. Some of it will be very poorly written or edited. Some of it, unfiltered by the commercial presses, will truly be out there on the fringe.

And some of it will be wonderful.

I pitched this idea to a gathering of the Colorado Independent Publishers Association recently. One author said he really liked it: it's the Wikipedia model. Put the work out there, let everybody weigh in, and you wind up with something that's actually of far higher quality than you might have predicted.

This experiment would be something new in libraries. I'm ready to try it. Is Douglas County?
---
LaRue's Views are his own.

May 26, 2011 - the allure of Sally

2011-05-26T09:01:00.000-07:00

Recently I visited a friend. Her name is Sally Maguire. She’s dying.

We all are, I suppose. But Sally, age 85 83, has a rare and fast-moving cancer. It started in her sinus cavities, and quickly spread to the rest of her body.

Francis, her husband, died 14 years ago. “It would be nice,” Sally said, “if I believed that I’d see him again when I died.” She looked me straight in the eyes. “But I don’t.”

Sally doesn’t believe in an afterlife. Neither did Francis. There are no cards for secular humanists (I think); but if there were, she could carry one.

Yet, she told me, she wasn’t afraid to die. She’d had a good, long run, and wasn’t interested in extraordinary measures, extraordinary stress and nausea, that would buy her just a few more months.

Instead, she believed that her prognosis – more and more sleep, less and less appetite – didn’t sound like a bad way to leave the world.

Sally and Francis were two of the first people I met in Douglas County. They had a lot to do with why I decided to come here. Any place with people like them, I figured, had to be good.

It took me a while to realize that Sally and Francis would have been rare anywhere.

Sally hailed from the east coast. She attended a fine women’s college there – it eventually merged with Rutgers. Later, she worked in the world of New York PR. She retained, all her life, a passion for clear and grammatical prose.

Sally was also a much-decorated volunteer for the library. She gave many hours to the now long gone Perry Park Library. She was there at the very beginning of our Douglas County History Research Center, and in fact contributed to local history in "The Perry Park Story" (available at the Douglas County Libraries).

Sally was also one of the brains behind the 1990 campaign that formed our library district, and the 1996 campaign that secured our current mill levy.

And she was there at the old Philip S. Miller Library on Plum Creek Boulevard my very first week. She provided me a steady stream of newspaper clippings about all my predecessors.

Most of those folks didn’t last very long. Sometimes, the reasons were … exotic. No Douglas County library director has ever been run out of town on a rail. But a time or two, it’s been close.

It was a good orientation for a new director.

My wife Suzanne and I were frequent guests at the Maguires. They were unfailingly witty, urbane, and engaging hosts.

When last I visited their beautiful home, Sally showed me a photo from her 1955 honeymoon. She and Francis were sitting in Galatoire’s Restaurant (209 Bourbon Street).

Francis looked like he always did – sharp, animated, and a little quirky. Sally looked both gamin and radiant. The photograph captured a fetching gaze.

If I’d been around back then (as a contemporary, I mean), I would given Francis a run for his money.

I would have lost, of course. Francis was a Harvard man, just back from India. I went to a state college. I was outgunned. But a boy can dream.

Finally, none of us gets out alive. But Sally remains for me – always – the model of graciousness, an allure that is both sophisticated and real.

[Note: Sally Lovelace Ward Maguire was born July 6, 1927, in Danbury, CT to Helen and Conrad Ward. She died at her home in Perry Park, Larkspur, CO on July 25, 2011.]
--

Last week’s column by David Farnan seems to have stirred up a lot of curiosity.

He asked,” In which book was the significance of a literary work not what was written but what it was written with?"

The answer? First, let me say, as David said to me, that you really should read the book.

But he read it, and still didn’t know. The Battle of the Books kids did, though. The answer is “Shakespeare’s Secret,” by Elise Broach. See page 172. The literary work (a poem) was "written with a diamond on her window at Woodstock."

Additional reading lists can be found on our web page:

douglascountylibraries.org/kids/resource/battle-books-3rd-4th

douglascountylibraries.org/kids/resource/battle-books-5th-6th

--
LaRue's Views are his own.

May 19, 2011 - no losers in battle of the books

2011-05-12T09:12:00.000-07:00

[This week's column is by David Farnan, Associate Director of Community Service for the Douglas County Libraries.]

In which book …

…was the significance of a literary work not what was written but what it was written with?

It’s okay if you don’t know the answer. It is highly likely that you don’t know. I’ve read the book, and I still didn’t know. And yet, 5 nine year olds knew last Friday night in the final round of Battle of the Books.

What is Battle of the Books?

Where do you go on Friday night to see Iron Horse Elementary Principle Steve Getchell and Pioneer Elementary Principle Tim Krabacher duke it out with oversize boxing gloves with the theme song from Rocky blaring in the background as the warm-up act to charge up their team?
Battle has cheering crowds, nervous jitters, wringing hands, tears, and most of all heads coming together in vigorous whispered debate. All that “thrill of victory, agony of defeat” stuff happens in the library.

Schools invent exotic names for their teams; “The Book Brawlers,” “The Killer Bookworms,” “Little Freddie Muffin Muffins.” Clear Sky Elementary even tie-died their shirts. Kids sign each other’s t-shirts, ask for autographs, invent ways of high-fiving to celebrate a correct answer.

It should be televised. It would be perfect for the Wide World of Sports or ESPN. The library should sell tickets. The kids are THAT good.

And guess what?

It’s all about reading.

The library has been hosting Battle of the Books for 3 years. This year over 30 elementary schools and more than 450 kids participated. Battle is a 5 month apprenticeship in the art of competitive deep reading. It’s the kind of examination of the written word that in centuries past was reserved for monks and ministers and rabbis engaged in Biblical exegesis and Talmudic hermeneutics. It is a full-on literary-smackdown the likes of which haven’t been seen since the Council of Nicea, the Diet of Worms, and the Baraita – all accompanied by cheering crowds.

Where else can you find this kind of entertainment?

I spoke to Principle Alan McQueen of Heritage Elementary. Heritage had teams reach the finals for the 3-4 and 5-6 grade. He attended each match. “Battle has totally changed the culture of our school. All the kids are talking about it. This year we had 55 kids try out just to make the two five-person teams that would compete. We talk about it in assembly. Kids convene during lunch to talk about the books. Reading is cool.”

In the Parker 5th and 6th grade finals there were around 100 parents and grandparents, teachers and administrators, there to root on the kids. When the 20 questions were over, the teams were tied. It went to a tie breaker, and then a second tie breaker. The teams huddled together in heated debate whispering and gesticulating, teetering toward consensus.

When the answers were turned in, and the final correct answer was announced, the crowd roared to their feet. Wild applause. High fives. Kids jumping up and down. Crying. Hugging. It seemed more like the Rockies won the series, than a reading competition.

Winning and losing is never easy. But it mimics life, and its lessons learned. Several kids on winning and on losing teams burst into tears: a release after 5 months of studying minute intricacies of 10 books.

One mother on a losing team came up to me afterwards. Her son’s eyes were dry and clear, flickering with excitement. You could never tell his team lost. She said, “Before Battle he had only read Calvin and Hobbes. Since Battle began last fall he has read all the books on the list, plus all the other books by the authors on the list and he’s still going strong.” Elizabeth, the librarian, asked him, “Did you know there was a sequel to Dog’s Life?” “No,” he said. “Do Bone and Squirrel meet again?” “I’m not telling,” Elizabeth shot back. “You are going to have to read it yourself. Then we’ll talk about it.” He immediately bounded away off into the library.

In reading, if you play, you win.

May 12, 2011 - harness the power of play

2011-05-12T05:04:00.000-07:00

Imagine an underground train station. Coming out of the station, commuters can take the stairs, or take the escalator. Most people take the escalator.

Now suppose that you wanted to get more people to take the stairs.

If you were to pose that problem to most adults, they would offer all the usual strategies.

* A campaign of shame. Put up posters of really fat people. Then show the young, attractive ones taking the stairs. Make people feel bad for being lazy.

* An educational campaign. Write a series of newspaper articles, do a few grim video shoots, deploring the epidemic of escalator dependency, and pointing out the alarming, no, the enormous consequences of waddling commuters, including health care, not to mention the rising costs (get it?) of escalator repairs. Make people feel righteous for taking the stairs.

* A campaign of incentives. Pay people to take the stairs, or give them a discount on their train ticket. Figure out how to enforce this later. Different turnstiles, maybe.

* A campaign of punishment. Levy fines on fit people who take the escalator when they should be taking the stairs. Of course, you'd have to have exemptions for various medical conditions. So you'd need escalator permits, probably.

Or Google up "underground stair piano" to see a delightful alternative (it should be the first hit -- a Youtube video from Stockholm). They simply replaced the stairs with enormous piano keys. When you take the stairs, the steps (black and white) play musical notes.

A hidden camera tells the story. Without seeing any advertising or exhortations at all, by the end of the first day, 66% more people took the stairs. They not only walked up the stairs, they bounced up and down them, and even teamed up to do coordinated melodies. Many people, particularly children, literally danced up the stairs.

How often have you heard that "nobody likes change?" Nonsense. When it's more fun to change than to stay the same, change is embraced.

For instance, I learned more about physics ("the angle of incidence is equal to the angle of refraction") in pool halls than in physics classes. In pool halls, I paid attention.

This is called the Theory of Fun. When we want to change people's behavior, we get quicker results when we appeal to their sense of play than when we appeal to their sense of duty.

Now apply this to management. Let's face it: even the most enlightened managers tend to fall back on top-down and even punitive approaches. We tell people how things are going to be, by God. Then, if they don't move fast enough, we write them up. If they still don't do what we want, there are consequences.

Another approach is "appreciative inquiry." We try to appeal to people's pride, their accomplishments, their desire for a better future.

But none of that seems to be as immediately effective as just giving folks the opportunity to fool around.

Recently I attended a workshop about organizational culture. There are three levels for any organization. First, there's what you see: the physical attributes of a place, and what that says about what matters. Second, there's what the leaders of an organization tell you about what matters. Third, there's how things really are. It's rare when all those things match up.

I wonder what American public service and corporate culture would look like if we all tried a little harder not to try so hard. Wouldn't that be fun?

--
LaRue's Views are his own.

May 5, 2011 - will we face facts, or collapse?

2011-05-05T10:49:00.000-07:00

Jared Diamond is the man who wrote "Guns, Germs, and Steel." Published in 1997, it was the story of how, where, and why civilization developed. I just finished reading "Collapse," his book about how and why civilizations end. It came out in 2007.

Diamond's curiosity, erudition, and exposition are impressive. There's no one explanation for why a society falters -- or thrives. In fact, he identifies five concerns: climate change, hostile neighbors, collapse of essential trading partners, environmental problems, and failure to adapt to environmental issues.

Using fascinating scientific evidence from the Mesa Verde area (dendrochronology, or the study of tree rings, and the information extracted from packrat middens, which are the remains of rat nests), he makes a persuasive case that the disappearance of the Anasazi basically came down to drought. The cycle of such droughts is long - too long for a pre-literate people to remember as they expanded their population.

Other environmental problems are more directly manmade. For example, there was the complete deforestation of Easter Island. Today, it is farming and lumbering practices that lead to "mining" the soil (extracting nutrients for short term crops) instead of sustainably farming it, as in Australia.

An example of "hostile neighbors" is the abandonment of their little North American colony by the Vikings, whose idea of announcing their presence was to kill every Indian they met. There were rather more Indians than Vikings. The Vikings got into trouble again in Greenland when their connection to Europe was disrupted by increasingly icy seas.

In addition to his exploration of the distant and not-so-distant past Diamond analyzes more current challenges, such as those faced by Haiti, Montana, and the author's home town of Los Angeles.

He also takes a hard look at big business and the environment. Some of his conclusions may surprise you. For instance, guess who runs what has become "by far the largest and most rigorously controlled national park in Papua New Guinea?" Answer: Chevron, which is fact operating an oil field.

Then there's mining. An all-too-common story is Galactic Resources' Summitville Mine right here in Colorado. The owners, eight years after getting an operating permit for a gold mine and apparently doing quite well, abruptly declared bankruptcy, failed to pay their sizable tax bill, laid off all its employees with a week's notice, abandoned the site, and left taxpayers to clean up a cyanide spill into the local water supply. Cost: $147,500,000.

Diamond doesn't blame the companies. Or at least, he doesn't just shake his finger at their "rape and run" morality. He states flatly that if we want mining, we have to figure in the full costs of good stewardship and clean-up. Those are the costs of doing business, and we need regulation to ensure that we identify them and hold the company accountable. We also have to track the supply chain, and let the consumer know the full cost of a sustainable economy. Most Americans will indeed pay a little more for the green product -- if they have the option.

Some civilizations fall. Others face facts, address both the cultural and scientific factors of their situation, and solve their problems. Will we be one of them?

--
LaRue's Views are his own.

April 28, 2011 - let's face budget realities

2011-04-28T06:22:00.000-07:00

Let me make my position clear at the outset: I think everybody else is crazy, and I'm not too sure about myself.

I do know that the current budget discussions at the national, state, and even local levels are really about the purpose of government. But that never seems to get directly addressed.

At the federal level, Paul Ryan's budget seems incoherent to me. He claims that we are in such dire economic shape that we must cut programs that benefit the elderly, the sick, and the poorest among us.

Yet, he continues, we must also cut taxes for the wealthiest among us. If the combination of these two is "revenue neutral," as Ryan claims, then we haven't solved a budget problem, have we?

Meanwhile, Forbes magazine reports that GE and Exxon, who owed a combined $25 billion in taxes last year, paid no federal income taxes at all, mostly by transferring assets overseas.

Perhaps Ryan believes in "trickle down economics." But that has now been thoroughly tested in both the Reagan and George W. Bush administrations. It has one wholly predictable and reliable result: a transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class to the wealthy. Today, the top 1% of U.S. society has more money than the combined total wealth of 95% of the bottom.

If it's bad, if it's "socialism," to redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor, then why is it good when redistributed in the other direction?

At the state level, Speaker of the House Frank McNulty calls for more sacrifices from state employees. These are the same state employees who (a) haven't gotten a raise in three years, (b) have in fact had their salaries reduced through forced furloughs, and (c) have had their salaries reduced again through forced increases in their retirement contributions.

When McNulty points out, truthfully, that many businesses have made even more drastic cuts, he ignores a crucial fact: businesses make cuts because they aren't as busy as they used to be.

But precisely that same set of circumstances means that state government is busier than ever, particularly in health care and human services.

Asking state employees to "share in the sacrifice" of a recession caused not by the public sector but the private, when demand for public services is increasing, not decreasing, when mega companies get generous tax breaks and subsidies is, if I may be so bold, asking the wrong people.

The purpose of government is not to promote business; it is, to quote the preamble of the Colorado State Constitution, to "promote the general welfare." They're not always the same.

Are all government programs worthy of increased funding, without end? No.

Are taxes too high for some businesses? They are, although clearly not for the big companies. In Colorado, the problem is something called the Gallagher Amendment. It adjusts tax rates between business (29% tax rate) and residences (7.96%) to give homeowners a disproportionately low rate.

We can fix that. All we have to do is vote, statewide, to even things out. We could raise our residential taxes to lower the taxes of local businesses. It would be more fair. It would improve our economic environment. Of course, by itself, it wouldn't generate any more money, either, just change who pays it. To raise money will take even more tax increases.

Is the electorate willing to do that? Are you?

If not, demonizing and further punishing the state's beleaguered employees - at a time when the demand for their services is greatest - won't be enough to solve the state's budget crunch. We will, instead, cut the only place that remains to be cut in the state budget: K-12 education.

It's either wishful or deceptive thinking - or just plain crazy - to pretend otherwise.
--
LaRue's Views are his own.

April 21, 2011 - library interviews community leaders

2011-04-21T05:34:00.000-07:00

The Douglas County Libraries has been trying something new. We call it "the community interview." In brief, a group of librarians identified some 30-50 community leaders around the county (government, business, non-profits, and faith-based), then met with them to ask three questions:

* What are the key concerns of your constituents over the next one to two years?
* What do you wish you knew to help you make good decisions about those issues in this next year or two?
* Who else should we talk to?

Why did we choose interviews rather than surveys? It's true that interviews may not be quite as statistically significant as a scientific poll.

On the other hand, people who occupy positions of leadership, whether elected, appointed, or assumed, by necessity spend a lot of time talking to other people. And what humans do by nature is seek patterns. Leaders, by sifting through many other sources of information, become an information source in themselves. What's even more important is that they make meaning; they find the pattern in the data.

Why were we doing this at all? There are two reasons.

First, having a solid grasp of what's going on in the community helps the library to plan better. Every institution exists within a larger social environment. Identifying some of the movers and shakers in Douglas County and gleaning their insights helps us anticipate what people might look to us for.

Second, librarians have long responded to our patrons' needs on an individual basis. But might there be something we could do to help the community at large? Are there ways in which the library can add value by helping to clarify the bigger picture?

We've completed most of our interviews, and met with one another recently to try to make sense of the findings. Three main concerns came up over and over:

* Economic recovery. Concerns ranged from individuals looking for work or worried about foreclosures, to small business owners wondering how best to survive or even thrive during a recession.

* Water. There's a lot of anxiety about our relationship with this fundamental natural resource. There's a lot of confusion, too. Different communities have different concerns: Highlands Ranch is not Parker is not Castle Rock. But everyone senses that water will have a lot to do with the future of our county, and that a lot of money is going to change hands. One municipal leader quoted an old Western proverb: "Whiskey is for drinking. Water is for fighting."

* Civic engagement. At first, many of our leaders made it sound like the problem was one-way communication. How do we let people know what's going on? But upon probing, it was clear that the issue was deeper. As one pastor put it, the many smart people who have moved to Douglas County (mostly from far away) clearly exhibit most of the signs of grief. They are a separate people, disconnected from deeper webs of friendship and social connection. They go "home" for vacation.

Politics, at least as currently practiced, seems more about further fracturing our communities than about bringing them together. But the thirst for community is real.

Over the next several months, the library will be further summarizing our findings, and assembling some resources to better inform our residents about the issues they say matter most to them.

Many thanks to all our gracious interviewees. Thanks as well to the librarians who found the experiment so rewarding.

---
LaRue's Views are his own.

April 7, 2011 - do you trust the news?

2011-04-07T16:12:00.000-07:00

Suppose you're at a party and some guy quotes a "fact." You ask him, "Where did you hear that?" And he says "Fox News."

If you like Fox News, that's credible. If you don't, you're dubious.

Same thing if he says, "NPR." If you think well of NPR, then you're likely to accept it. If you're suspicious of NPR, you're suspicious of anything they say.

But suppose he tells you, "I heard it on both Fox AND NPR."

The odds of that happening may be small. But should such a remarkable consensus occur I'm guessing almost everybody would go along with it. The biases cancel out. When sources on the opposite sides of a political spectrum say the same thing, it just might be true.

That core principle - getting sources from "the other side" - is one of the principles that leads to news trustworthiness.

When Fabrice Florin, who consulted for Music Television and worked for both Apple Computer and Macromedia, approached his 50 year birthday,he found that he wanted to "give back." So he tackled what he saw as a big social challenge: how could he help grow fact-based journalism in the age of the World Wide Web?

Eventually he launched a new non-profit, called Newstrust.net. It builds and offers various online tools to help people "find, check, rate and present trustworthy news."

It's not only high school students who need to think critically. We should all be on the look-out for well-reasoned analysis, not just something that comports with our ignorance or prejudice.

The effort is timely. I just read a Pew Report that said if you're under 30, you now get more of your news from the Internet than from TV. It might be a good thing for our country if our citizens worked a little harder to sort fact from fiction.

You can see the results in a project in Baltimore. Newstrust.net uses a unique "pro-am" approach to rate the news. The idea is that a panel of invited participants, some "pro" journalists and some "amateur" citizens, scan stories in the local paper and rank them according to several crtieria:

* Is it factual?
* Is it fair?
* Is it well-resourced (citing more than one information source)?
* Do you recommend it? And finally -
* Do you trust it?

These panelists then post a review, in essence, ranking the story for credibility. Those reviews add up to a "rating" -- a non-partisan and participatory consensus about the quality of reporting.

What's interesting is that the raters are themselves rated. Readers can also rank the reviews. If well-rated reviewers comment favorably on an article, then the article carries more "weight." It's a credibility filter.

The idea is that people would work their way up the pyramid of trust: visitor, member, reviewer, host, editor, staff. But you have to get positive ratings from a lot of critical viewers to do it. At present, Newstrust.net has about 100,000 visitors, and 5 staff. The rest of the work is done by software.

Isn't that fascinating?

Newstrust.net has partnered with schools. It hasn't yet worked with libraries, although I'm intrigued enough to investigate it further. I'm also intrigued by another collaborative citizen service called Truthsquad (see newstrust.net/truthsquad). It "crowd sources" news fact-checking in a way that feels more like a game than a research project.

Newstrust.net is also interested in digital knowledge "curation" - archiving and providing public access to journalism. That's another potential role for librarians.

For more information, see this video interview: tinyurl.com/libraries-newstrust. Or visit the Newstrust.net national site: newstrust.net/about. Teachers, try this one: newstrust.net/guides/teachers.

It's good stuff. Trust me.

------
LaRue's Views are his own.

March 31, 2011 - clean water worth the cost

2011-03-31T06:17:00.000-07:00

In the 19th century, cholera killed tens of millions of people around the world. In 1854, a pandemic killed over 5.5% of the population of Chicago. In that same year, London had an outbreak that was carefully studied by physician John Snow. He became the first to advance an important new theory. Cholera was caused not by "miasma" or "bad air" but by contaminated water.

Typhoid fever was also linked to contaminated water. It, too, has a long history. On the basis of some (disputed) DNA research some historians believe typhoid fever is what wiped out the English colony of Jamestown, Virginia.

During the American Civil War, over 80,000 Union soldiers died of typhoid or dysentery.

William Wallace Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln's third son, died of typhoid fever. So did Lincoln's wife, Mary Todd. And so did Stephen Douglas, the "Little Giant" after whom Douglas County is named.

But after Snow's singlehanded invention of epidemiology, American cities made massive investments in water and sewage treatment. And between 1850 and 1900, cholera and typhoid fever were almost completely eliminated in the United States (except for one last cholera outbreak in 1910-11). Since then, ongoing regulations preserve that record.

Whenever somebody says, "what's government ever done for ME?" remember this. Public investment in infrastructure nobody sees, everybody takes for granted, means that you and your children don't die of preventable illness. It wasn't business that did that. It was government.

After the United States, many European states invested in filtration and chlorination systems, with a similar reduction in deaths.

The rest of the world isn't so fortunate. Between 1900 and 1920, an estimated eight million people died of cholera in India. Contaminated water in developing countries remains a significant problem. Waterborne diseases are the leading cause of death for children under five. A host of international organizations have concluded something that is by now, I hope, obvious: One of the most important health issues around the globe is clean water.

As of last year, roughly 84% of the world population could count on clean water piped right to their houses. About 14% can not.

After natural disasters - like the earthquake/tsunami in Japan - the greatest single threat to health probably is not nuclear power plants. It is waterborne diseases, precipitated by the catastrophic collapse of public systems.

Recently, I've listened to several local governments grappling with the issue of Douglas County's long term water supply. We're lucky in that much of our water infrastructure is relatively new. But it does not have the capacity to support much in the way of new growth.

For large parts of the county, and indeed of our entire country, we are approaching a time when it will be necessary to massively reinvest in the hidden systems that keep us alive and healthy.

The American public had that will to invest in the late 1800s, even after a devastating Civil War. Sometimes I wonder, amidst the many discussions of tax slashing, budget reductions, and mistrust of government, whether we do today. And what the consequences will be if we do not.

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LaRue's Views are his own.

March 24, 2011 - one way or another, you get a book

2011-03-24T04:47:00.000-07:00

I’ve been spending a lot of time lately thinking and talking with colleagues about the future of libraries. How will or should we respond to the coming eBook shift in the publishing world?

I have three comments this week.

First, at the Douglas County Libraries, over a third of our checkouts are children’s books. It isn’t uncommon to see mothers and a gaggle of giggling preschoolers tumble out the door with as many as 40 books at a time. Often, that's the haul from a visit that happens every week.

It’s hard not to feel good about that. Families that come to the library together not only spend quality time in each other’s company, they also establish a habit of literacy. Students in Douglas County schools tend to do very well academically. Surely part of the explanation is that many Douglas County children are ready to read long before they get to kindergarten. Libraries help make communities smarter.

What about those families who bring their children to the library? Are they really going to have an eBook reader for each child? Are they really willing to buy 40 books a week, 52 weeks a year?

If our goal is literate kids, the library – and its role as a cost-effective distributor of literature, music, and movies - will have a role for a long time.

Nonetheless, we have to explore new directions, too.

And that’s my second comment. I am very pleased to announce a partnership between the Colorado Independent Publishers Association (CIPA), and two Colorado libraries: the Red Rocks Community College Library, and the Douglas County Libraries.

Many members of CIPA have entered the world of digital publishing. By June of 2011, the Red Rocks Community College and the Douglas County Libraries will not only offer ebooks from CIPA authors for checkout through library catalogs, but will also allow click-through purchases of these titles.

Karen Reddick, Executive Director of the Colorado Independent Publishers Association, said "For twenty years, CIPA has been one of the largest and most active independent publishing groups in the nation. This pilot program will help us introduce a new generation of writers to a new generation of readers. Some of those readers will become writers themselves; some will become the next generation of independent publishers."

This partnership underscores the changing nature of publishing and distribution. Recently, larger commercial publishers have cut libraries out of the eBook market altogether, or have imposed onerous new restrictions on use.

"Libraries are natural partners with independent publishers," said Joseph Sanchez, Director of Library and Learning Services for the Red Rocks Community College. "We understand and value both copyrights and the great value of alternative viewpoints. We can easily integrate eBooks into our collections, ensuring one use at a time, but also exposing authors to precisely the people who are looking for them."

My own take is this: Connecting writers and readers is what we do best, through our two million visitors a year to our facilities, and another two million through our catalog. This project will demonstrate not only that libraries are firm supporters of the independent publishers through our willingness to buy and promote their works, but also that libraries and publishers can help each other grow the still-developing eBook market.

Finally, my third comment is about what to do when your old car finally dies. Mine did, so I gave it to the library. And I'm not alone. If you’re on our website (DouglasCountyLibraries.org), click on the lower left corner, labeled Car Donation. There, you’ll get a couple of phone numbers (303-423-2277, or 866-701-2277), or can fill out an online form. They came and picked it up right out of my driveway. They auctioned it off, and donated half of that back to the library. The more cars we collect, the more we make. It’s easy, convenient, tax-deductible (they send you a receipt), and it’s good for your community.

What does that have to do with eBooks? Well, if you haven’t got a car, you may as well stay home and read. One way or another, we’ll get a book to you.
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LaRue's Views are his own.

March 17, 2011 - your right to read is at risk

2011-03-17T09:41:00.000-07:00

I just returned from a meeting with the American Library Association, part of a task force responding to some pernicious trends in the world of publishing. Our work even rated a mention in USA Today.

Let me see if I can put this plainly: your right to read is at risk. If you're an author, you may lose your right to BE read.

A transformation is underway in commercial publishing, and not just on the commercial side. In brief, the movement is away from print, and toward digital. That won't happen overnight, but it will certainly happen eventually. Why?

It's cheaper and faster. As an author, once I've done the work, I can "publish" an eBook in just a few moments, in just a few clicks. As a publisher, I don't have to print, bind, and ship anything. There are no "returns" to mess with from bookstores.

And what is the publisher response to this huge drop in production costs?

Many publishers in the rapidly consolidating world of commercial publishing - among them giants Macmillan, and Simon & Schuster - won't sell eBooks to libraries at all. Why? Because they believe, falsely, that there's an opportunity to greatly boost their profits while reducing the availability of the product. Sell direct to the consumer, bypass the cooperative purchasing power of the library, and eliminate this whole business of people not paying for every single access.

Under this emerging model, the right of ownership disappears. You simply won't be able to own a book anymore. You will have to have the device, the communications plan, and the money to pay per view. It's like replacing home ownership with a rental -- where the owner has the ability to raise the rent whenever he feels like it. It replaces the DVD with an on-demand subscription. It eliminates booksales and heirloom gifts with corporate lockboxes.

Publishers who won't sell new formats to libraries forget that we have a nationwide sales force. All by itself, Douglas County Libraries has 2 million visitors a year, and another 2 million to our website. Almost all of those people are looking for books. We're just about to roll out exciting new ways to display e-Content, and make it more findable. Cut us out of that eco-system, and all you really accomplish is to make it more difficult for readers to find authors, and for authors to find an audience.

As I alluded to last week, the move from LP album to CD was a similar savings for music publishers, and resulted in a similar grab for money. The result? Consumers rejected the whole system, and went direct, eliminating the middle man, and finding new distribution channels.

Public libraries in the 21st century are busy community hubs. Librarians are active and passionate lovers of literature, of music, of movies. We're even crazy about technology. Librarians will remain relevant and engaged in the acquisition, organization, and provision of public access to creative content. We're good at it. We will survive.

Will the big publishers? When they're reluctant to sell to some of their best customers, to the detriment of their own content creators?

Librarians think your right to read is worth fighting for. Watch this space for the announcement of some new partnerships. It's clear that we need them.

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LaRue's Views are his own.

March 10, 2011 - you own nothing

2011-03-10T10:06:00.000-08:00

On Friday, Feb. 25, 2011, publishing company HarperCollins announced that its already restrictive "license" for library "purchases" of ebooks had become even more onerous. Henceforth, an ebook sold by them to libraries can only be checked out 26 times. Then libraries have to "buy" it again.

It might be useful to step back and talk about how things work now. Douglas County Libraries currently spends over $3.3 million a year to buy a sample of the intellectual content of our culture. That's books, movies, and music.

For most books, we get close to a 50% discount. Why a discount? Because we are volume purchasers. Across the United States, libraries account for about 10% of all book sales. For children's books, it's over 40% of sales.

Libraries also have another effect: we help authors find readers. A handful of authors will sell all their copies. But for most writers, the problem is getting passed around often enough to start to make a name for themselves. Then people are more likely to buy one book, and watch for the next one.

What do we do with the books we buy? We talk them up, for one thing. Then we make them available to the public, regardless of age, income, or education. Libraries make it possible for everyone, for anyone, to find out what's going on the world.

As I discussed in a previous column, physical books take up space, and library space is limited, so we also have to get rid of a lot of books. That process, called weeding, shoves even more books into people's homes. Books often have a second, third, and fourth life, moving through church and thrift stores at heavily discounted prices.

So is this system of library purchase and resale good for authors? Yes. It increases the likelihood that someone will discover them.

Is that good for society? Absolutely. Literacy is better than illiteracy.

Is it good for libraries? You bet. Literacy is our primary product.

Is it good for publishers? Guaranteed multi-million dollar purchases, year after year, coupled with a free marketing force to grow audiences for their books?

HarperCollins doesn't think so.

Here's how the ebook market is shaping up for libraries.

1. We can't buy an ebook at all. We rent it, and the file doesn't even live on our own servers. It remains in the cloud, usually very poorly integrated into our catalogs. That means that people have to look in multiple places for content, which is less convenient.

2. The library price for ebooks, rather than being half retail cost because we are volume purchasers, is often twice the retail cost. Publishers say, but libraries let lots of people read them! We let lots of people read paper books, too, and you can't tell me that hosting a file is anywhere near as expensive as printing and distributing a physical item. Publishers want a much higher price (a 100 percent increase) for a product that is much cheaper to produce.

3. When a book is no longer popular, libraries can't resell or give away things they don't own. That means no more booksale income for the library, and no more cheap copies of reasonably current ideas for the public.

4. Under the HarperCollins scheme some books may disappear altogether. Each title will have a metered use. Want it again? Well, publishers often take books off the market for a while. And publishers may not survive.

5. Some ebooks, such as those from Amazon, are device-dependent. If you, as a consumer, buy one from Amazon, the license says you can only read it on a Kindle. What happens when your Kindle dies? Well, you either buy another Kindle, if there is one, or start building your library all over again. It's like having to buy another copy of a CD for every player you own.

6. Alternatives. A few new ideas have sprung up -- Kindle owners lending to other Kindle owners, a proposed national digital library, and the growth of new self-publishing sites.

And we need alternatives. The way things are shaping up, publishers will try to make it impossible to own a book. They want to monetize the transmission of ideas, to the detriment of author and reader alike.

It's the same strategy championed by music publishers. And we know how well that worked out.

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LaRue's Views are his own.

March 3, 2011 - in the dark about what happens at night

2011-03-03T10:35:00.000-08:00

After my granddad retired, he got tired of playing bridge and growing roses. Finally, my grandmother told him to go back to work. So he did, where he sold appliances for a big chain store. An astute human observer, he loved it.

One day he listened to a younger salesman lose a deal. A housewife was looking at freezers. The young salesman told her (correctly) that a special feature of this freezer was that it automatically defrosted.

"How does it do that?" asked the housewife.

The salesman gamely launched into an explanation. But since he really didn't know, it wasn't very convincing. The housewife grew more and more dubious, and finally walked out of the store without buying anything.

"What should I have done?" asked the salesman. "Next time," said granddad, "just tell her 'it happens at night.'"

When it comes right down to it, that's about how much understanding most of us have about the physical world.

Where does it go when you flush the toilet? It goes ... away. Possibly to a sewage treatment plant, however that works. Pipes are involved.

How come we don't fall off the planet? Gravity! How does that work? Um. Gravitons? I'm pretty sure it has something to do with mass, although it would be neat if there were invisible velcro particles.

It would be foolish to have big fights about whether or not there are sewage plants. Hardly anybody proclaims his fervent opposition to the longstanding Theory of Gravity.

It seems silly to argue about things we don't know much about. And you can't declare that nobody else should believe something just because you can't be bothered to understand it yourself.

Therefore, of course, we do it all the time. That's precisely the situation regarding the Theory of Evolution - an attempt to explain the development of our planet's rich biodiversity.

I'm reading a book called "Monkey Girl: evolution, education, religion, and the battle for America's soul," by Edward Humes. Parts of it make you shake your head. Other parts, you laugh out loud.

The book is about the 2005 trial called Kitmiller versus Dover (PA) Area School District, in which Judge John E. Jones III found the teaching of "Intelligent Design" (ID) unconstitutional.

It was painfully clear that the school board members who voted to introduce ID hadn't done their homework. When directly asked just what evolution asserted, they got it all wrong. They couldn't describe what ID was about, either. They were pretty sure, though, that "Darwinism" was atheistic, and ID was Christian. The judge decided that they were right about the latter.

But regarding the former, I've never understood the angry opposition to evolution, or why people feel it has to contradict religious faith.

Couldn't science be seen as an act of the most profound devotion and reverence? When, after experimentation, careful analysis, and much thinking, we uncover subtle natural laws, couldn't it be argued that we begin to get a glimmer of just how God does things?

Science takes work, though. I think for some folks, for a lot of us, it's just easier to guess God does it at night.

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LaRue's Views are his own.

February 24, 2011 - Douglas County makes health history

2011-02-24T11:30:00.000-08:00

In college, I got a bean bag chair. I also gave up the daily exercise program I'd followed for years. There was neither privacy nor room in my dorm.

By the end of the second semester, suddenly, I had a problem.

I was in constant lower back and limb pain. I started to need to walk with a cane.

A visit to the doctor revealed that I had a small hole in my spine. The problem traced back to a condition called spina bifida. It's a birth defect.

In my case, I could control it simply by getting rid of the bean bag chair and going back to my exercise routine.

But tens of thousands of people suffer from spina bifida. Eventually, after lots of research, it turned out that there's a simple "cure:" pregnant women need to take a daily B-vitamin with folic acid.

That's it. Spina bifida is largely preventable.

Now suppose you knew that you could make a big difference in the quality of human life, particularly in the area of what makes a healthy child.

You wouldn't have to change anything about your own life, other than to pay attention, and to contribute information to a scientific study.

You would do it, right? Why wouldn't you?

There are a few catches. This is a big study -- you'd sign up for 21 years.

You'd be a volunteer. It's not a paid job. You have to live in Douglas County, Colorado. We are one of just 105 counties in the United States selected from which to gather data.

And most important: you have to be, or trying to be, pregnant. (Sorry, men. This influential opportunity is available to women only.)

In brief, that's the aim of the National Children's Study. You can find out more about it here.

Or as they put it, "The National Children’s Study will examine the effects of the environment, as broadly defined to include factors such as air, water, diet, sound, family dynamics, community and cultural influences, and genetics on the growth, development, and health of children across the United States, following them from before birth until age 21 years. The goal of the Study is to improve the health and well-being of children and contribute to understanding the role various factors have on health and disease. Findings from the Study will be made available as the research progresses, making potential benefits known to the public as soon as possible."

It's hard to know in advance what the findings will be. Not all children's health issues -- diabetes, mental illness, autism, asthma, and so on -- may have such straightforward remedies as spina bifida did.

But the way we learn big things is through the steady accretion of small details.

If you're interested in participating, and I hope you are, understand that there are two levels.

The first, the most engaged, is only available to those who live within particular ranges of addresses. These have been selected randomly throughout the county.

To maintain statistical validity (and thus make the data collection truly significant), these folks will contribute the most information. Who they are, of course, is strictly confidential. Anonymity will be strictly preserved, unless they choose to identify themselves.

Nor will participants be in any way judged. You never know: pizza and video games just might be the key to childhood vitality.

A second level, those who don't happen to live at those addresses, can still help.

They can talk about it enough to help the study recruit the first group. They can contribute many other kinds of information that may prove helpful.

Ultimately, the goal is to find 1,000 Douglas County participants, and over 100,000 participants nationwide. The National Children's Study may well help unravel issues that have plagued our children since the dawn of time.

Interested Douglas County women should call 303-799-6257, or email ncs.co@ucdenver.edu.

It's no exaggeration to say that this study will make history. Don't you want to be a part of it?
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LaRue's Views are his own.

February 17, 2011 - weather outside is frightful

2011-02-17T18:22:00.000-08:00

I was raised on the shore of Lake Michigan. During the winter, I went skating every night I could.

Often, it was minus 32 degrees. It really wasn’t that big a deal. You learn to dress in layers. That meant you wore a T-shirt, a shirt, a sweater, a coat, and a scarf. And gloves.

Although it was little uncool, in bitter weather you wore a hat, too. I had a great Russian one. I like hats.

But the truth is, after we skated around a bit, we took off the coat. We were young. We were burning up the fuel of our lives with abandon. Viewed from above on those frigid nights, we glittered like busy little embers in a fireplace.

In those days, I had a fantasy. When I died, I would be reincarnated as a big shaggy creature with hooves like skates. The whole world would be covered with ice. Symphonies of stars would sing around it.

Occasionally there would be natural fountains of hot chocolate. They would provide all that body's nutritional needs.

Doesn't that sound great?

But I digress. Later in life, I drove a produce truck through one of central Illinois' worst winters in a generation (1978). My motto: the kale must get through.

What I'm trying to say here is that cold weather doesn't seem that unusual to me. I know that people get out and get things done in it.

But here in Colorado, sometimes it seems to me that local residents, well, wimp out.

My own library staff, whom I know to be fearless in many ways, gets furrowed brows after just a few flakes. "Will the public be safe?" they wonder. Should we send our more far-flung staff home early? This concern is authentic and caring.

On the other hand, I believe we're supposed to put the convenience of our customers ahead of our own. All around us, post offices, hospitals, police, fire, grocery stores, restaurants, department stores, gas stations, even toy stores, all just do what they always do: stay open for business.

Surely we matter as much as they do.

So I say to my employees: I believe libraries are really important. I think we genuinely matter to seniors, moms, dads, business people, teenagers, and kids.

We're an essential part of the life of our communities. They expect us, quite rightly, to keep the doors open when we say they will be.

There are exceptions, of course. A few snowstorms have shut down the whole county for days. We closed, too.

One summer one of our libraries got hit by lightning, which made the building dark and powerless. It was so hot nobody could stand it. Once we lost water, which in a place with busy public restrooms isn't trivial.

When stuff like that happens, I close a library. I'm not crazy.

Let me restate that. I may be crazy. But not about that.

On occasion, I'll delay the opening of the library, or shut it down a little early. I'd rather do that than not open at all.

We always announce these things on our phone system (303-791-7323) and website (douglascountylibraries.org). I make the call by 6 a.m.

But you know what? In the winter, it gets cold. It snows. It's weather. Life goes on.

So unless things are genuinely weird, you should expect us to be open.

We ensure access to the intellectual content of our culture, no matter what kind of weather we face. It’s what we do.

We are the few. The literate. The tough.

The librarians.

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LaRue's Views are his own.

February 10, 2011 - it pays to watch the region

2011-02-10T06:48:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago I wrote, "The Internet, a global communications network, completely bypasses the control of a national government. It also bypasses traditional media controls."

I didn’t anticipate that this premise would be immediately tested in Tunisia and Egypt.

In Tunisia, a profound challenge to an autocratic regime was launched, sustained, and to some extent coordinated through the Internet.

On the other hand, no one believes the Internet was the primary factor in the revolt. Longstanding corruption, repression and widespread unemployment had a lot more to do with it.

Nonetheless, Egypt, facing similar unrest, sought to shut down Internet, and to a lesser extent, cell phone access for the whole nation. This is, incidentally, much easier to do when you have only four Internet providers in a country. (On the other hand, the subject has come up here, too. See this. Should the U.S. have a “kill switch” for the Internet?)

If the idea in Egypt was to stifle citizen anger, it didn't work. In fact, a lot of young people weren't happy about being denied access to Twitter and Facebook, even if they hadn't been particularly engaged in protests before. So they took to the streets.

I'm guessing that this wasn't quite what the government intended.

At this point, it’s difficult to say how things will play out in either nation. But clearly, we have a far more nuanced state of international affairs than many Americans believed to be the case.

It's really not about radical Islamic fundamentalists versus Christian advocates for democracy, however much our media and political leaders would like to frame it that way.

Like youth in the United States, young people in Tunisia and Egypt are more concerned about making a living than they are about political and religious ideologies of any stripe.

I maintain my belief that a steady stream of social contacts and information from around the globe makes it much harder for leaders to lie to their people about what’s really happening.

And that’s a good thing.

Speaking of what leaders say and how things actually are, I’d like to take a moment to talk about a significant difference in the approach taken by different municipalities in the county: Lone Tree and Parker on the one hand, and Castle Rock on the other.

Many years ago now, Lone Tree and Parker voted to join the Rapid Transit District authority, which, back then, shared boundaries with the Science And Cultural Facilities District.

Castle Rock did not vote to do so, arguing that it could invest the same amount of money and have its own public transportation system and cultural activities. Why, they said, should we give our money to Denver? So Castle Rock elected to go it alone.

Let’s take a look at the consequences of those choices.

Parker has long had the Mainstreet Arts Center, and will soon open its Parker Arts and Cultural Events Center. Lone Tree is opening a new center, too. They both have commuter bus (and Lone Tree has light rail) service, which many people use to go to work in the metro area.

I'm not saying that either of these programs (RTD or SCFD) is perfect.

But Castle Rock recently eliminated its award-winning Clean Air Shuttle service altogether, and has no funding for arts facilities at all.

So it sacrificed the demonstrated contribution to the economic life of a town of both public transportation and the arts.

To state this even more clearly: the failure to participate in regional investments in transportation and culture saved Castle Rock residents some modest contributions of sales tax. But despite what leaders said at the time, as recently as 2004, no enduring alternatives were ever created.

Of course, those who care about such things may not live in Castle Rock anymore.

Lone Tree and Parker’s more forward-thinking and pragmatic approach is creating and keeping jobs.

And residents.

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LaRue's Views are his own.

February 3, 2011 - the best is a bargain

2011-02-03T09:39:00.000-08:00

Last year I gave a series of talks. They all started with questions.

How many people had Internet access at home? It turns out that for most of the professional audiences I talked to, nearly everyone did. In Douglas County, surveys suggest that up to 97% of the households have broadband access at home.

So then I asked how much people spent per month, per household, for the service. The answers varied, but generally started at a low of $30 a month, up to about $80.

How many people had either cable or satellite TV at home? Again, most of the hands went up.

What did it cost? I found a few families who spent about $50 a month, but there were also some high-end satellite users who anted up $300. Usually, they watched a lot of sports.

How many people had cell phones? Again, it's hard to find anybody who doesn't, these days.

The monthly cost? You can get a single plan for $30. If you have teenagers who text, as I do, it's $150 a month.

So I asked how many people had Netflix. That tended to be a smaller crowd.

The monthly cost ranges from one movie a month (around $9) to three (around $25).

So let's just take a minute to recap. At the low end, households are putting out about $110 every month. At the high end, it's closer to $555.

What do you get for these expenditures? You get education (or so you tell yourself, because you watch nature films, not pro wrestling). Or, okay, for entertainment, because pro wrestling is hilarious. And finally, you get social connections -- Facebook, email, texting, and so on.

And almost everybody knows what they pay, although they don't often aggregate it.

Then I asked another question: and what good do these costs do your community?

At that point, my usually voluble audiences got quiet. It's a rhetorical question. They didn't buy those things for their community.

Then I asked the kicker: so what do you think the average American household spends per month for public libraries?

Right off, it became obvious. They had no idea. I've asked this question all around the state, and most people simply don't know.

The answer, based on national data, is this: households pay an average of $2.68 per month for their public libraries. Guess what. We provide education, entertainment, and social connection, too, except it actually benefits the entire community.

How does that average cost compare to Douglas County? It's a simple calculation.

The formula is this: take the market value of your home, then multiply it by .0796 to get your assessed value. Then multiply that number by .004 to get the library's annual assessment. Then divide that by twelve to get your monthly cost.

It just so happens that every year, all those government agencies that assess a property tax send out a bill. Think of it as a receipt for services. A lot of households are about to get this bill.

I don't own a terribly pricey home. But my library bill comes to $60.43. Per year. That's $5.03 per month. It's almost twice the national average. On the other hand, we are the number one library in the country for our population size, too.

So for $5 a month I can check out all the books, music, and movies I can use. I can take toddlers to free storytimes. I can go to civic events. I can see art, practice foreign languages, use really high speed public computers (although I may have to wait awhile for one to free up). I can even download library books and music from home, 24/7.

Libraries make our communities smarter and more interesting.

Just this month, Douglas County rolled out their tax calculator. You can find it here.

The idea is a good one: there's a lot of talk about "high taxes." But people have a tendency to exaggerate the numbers, and to have a pretty fuzzy notion of what they get for the expense.

So my advice: take a close look at your tax bill and think it over. It just might be a bargain.

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LaRue's Views are his own.

January 27, 2011 - where should you spend your time?

2011-01-27T09:13:00.000-08:00

Whether staff or supervisors, eventually professionals ask themselves: what should they spend their time on?

Working, yes (the better to get paid). But, broadly speaking, where should they concentrate their efforts? How should they prioritize their time?

Over the years I have put together a mental model. It looks like a series of concentric circles. I use it to evaluate the people who work for me, and I use it to evaluate my own performance. It works for libraries. But I bet it works for lots of organizations, both public and private. I'd be curious to find out about that. (Email me here.)

At the center is "Department." Most of a professional's time is spent doing the work of a department or work unit. In the library, this might be "the reference department." In a business, it might be "payroll."

Surrounding that is "Organization." By this I mean that professionals should also contribute outside their department to the organization as a whole. So someone in the reference department should also be spending time working on other committees or task forces important to the larger activities of the Douglas County Libraries. In business, someone in payroll should also be available for inventory.

Surrounding that sphere is "Community." Another way to think of this is "the authorizing environment." It is essential to pay attention to the people who make decisions about the organization, or pays its bills. In the case of the library again, that would be the larger community of Douglas County. For other professions, it might be the market that purchases its services. I'm not just talking about "sales" -- contact with customers. I mean involvement, actively observing and participating in the world of that authorizing environment. For example, public librarians should be connected to Chambers of Commerce, and civic organizations. Medical equipment producers should hang out with, and seek leadership positions among, people in the medical professions.

Surrounding the community sphere is "Profession." Professional people not only take jobs within a field, they have an obligation to contribute to that field's knowledge. Part of this is continuing education: staying abreast of trends through reading, workshops and conferences. But it also includes presentations and writing: the creation of new knowledge, feeding the larger theoretical universe with reports from the front.

For most organizations, these four spheres do a good job of setting boundaries for the expenditure of professional time. The department probably involves at least 65% of the work, and perhaps more. In combination with work for the organization, the percentage may approach 90% of work time.

But the remaining two are still important. Not only does activity here rejuvenate the professional (by getting his or her head out of the trenches and comparing notes with others), but it also feeds a deeper understanding of the work.

Sometimes, I think there's a fifth sphere: "Society" or "Culture." It might happen, for instance, that a chemist working for a pharmaceutical company gets concerned about the many casual, anti-scientific sentiments that show up over and over in the media. So she decides to do something about it, speaking and writing to groups outside her field to advocate in the broadest sense for scientific education in the United States. At this point, she's not just working for her department, organization, or community. While she is still working for her profession, she's trying to influence the much larger society in which it operates.

I suspect there aren't many professionals who fall into that last sphere. If they do, I doubt they spend much more than 1 percent of their time there. But it just might be that this big, ambitious endeavor ultimately means more than the rest of the spheres together.

--
LaRue's Views are his own.

January 20, 2011 - life phases and the library

2011-01-20T07:39:00.000-08:00

According to Hindu philosophy, there are four stages of life:

* the student,
* the householder,
* the retired person, and
* the ascetic or "forest dweller."

In the first phase, you receive values and teaching. In the second phase, you live or embody them. In the third phase, you transmit values and teaching as an older mentor and grandparent. And in the final phase, you transcend values, leaving everything behind to wander into the forest, seeking wisdom.

In modern times, each of those phases seems to subdivide into others.

For instance, "student" would now seem to encompass infant to toddler, toddler to preschooler, preschooler to puberty, puberty to college. Each has a distinct transition, marked by stages both of brain development and emotion.

"Householder" stretches from just starting out -- your first job, car, or apartment -- through launching a career or careers, marriage or marriages, children, and (for some) to the transition from the absorbed self to conscious and active social participant.

"Retired person" starts from mid-life and its dawning realizations, through the empty nest, right up to actually leaving the full-time job whose pursuit seemed so important for so long.

In American life, the "forest dweller," the wandering monk, doesn't get a lot of attention. But with 10,000 Baby Boomers now turning 65 every day, I suspect we'll see at least one big social movement like that.

Knowing my generation, I fear for the forest.

Most of what we celebrate in our culture focuses on the dramatic transitions of the first two phases of life. "Coming of age" stories have great sweep and power. We fall in love, take big risks, go to war. The turning goes from passive to active, from hearing about things to doing things. Particularly in America, we like bright beginnings. And we glory in the beauty of youth.

But that perspective doesn't always serve us. It can't always be spring and summer, not even in California. The subtle rhythms of the full year, and its lessons of harvest and wintering, have their own power and poignancy.

I believe we find meaning in our lives through the gathering and telling of stories. We may well have to reach into other cultures and times to find patterns that have more to teach us than we find close to home.

This may be one of the great values of the library. We have, of course, many dedicated users. They were taken to the library as children, and developed a nourishing and engaging habit of library visits, with only minor interruptions.

But for many others, the library exists in the background, as taken for granted and unseen as fire hydrants. But then comes a life transition: the loss of a child or spouse, an illness that hastens withdrawal from that second phase of life. Suddenly, your life is on fire, and the presence of a deep connection to life-saving water from far away is literally transformative.

We hear, and tell, such stories in the library every day. Students become householders. Retired executives become literacy tutors. It's even possible that one or two seasoned souls are beginning to reckon up their lives and pan them for gold.

There are many stories in our community, and that community stretches across cultures and times, and the transitions that make us human. The library makes that connection strong.

---
LaRue's Views are his own.

January 13, 2011 - who owns you?

2011-01-13T08:34:00.000-08:00

To whom do you belong?

There was a time in European history when almost everyone belonged to the Catholic church. Then came a disruptive technology: the printing press. Within the space of a couple generations (which is about how long it takes for a big technology shift to happen) literacy swept the continent.

Almost all of the first books to be printed in this time were Bibles. The Word was held in veneration, and people could imagine no greater accomplishment than to read it for themselves.

But when that happened, people couldn't help but notice that the Bible didn't always square with what their priest told them. They started to question things they hadn't questioned before. Literacy resulted in a fundamental challenge to the hegemony of the church.

The church did what many prevailing power structures do when threatened. It overreacted. We know it today as the Inquisition.

But the challenges continued, leading to Martin Luther's Ninety-five Theses and the establishment of the Protestant movement. The result? While the Catholic Church is still strong around the world, it isn't the secular power it once was.

Let's move forward in time to 1843, to the invention of another technology: the fax machine. After a series of improvements, it moved into military use in the 1950s, and common business use in the 1980s.

On June 4, 1989 came the student protests in Tiananmen Square. Soldiers opened fire on protesters, killing at least 400 people, and perhaps more than twice that.

News didn't travel easily from China is those days. (It doesn't travel easily today.) The only reason we know about those events was through technology: an unattended fax machine. Later, the video of "tank man" -- one student facing down a tank -- was smuggled out.

Now let's move forward again: 2010. Last November, Wikileaks -- a non-profit organization dedicated to publishing "secret" documents from a variety of sources -- released a flood of information from U.S. diplomatic cables.

According to some, there wasn't anything especially new, although there was much that was embarrassing. Wikileaks, and its key spokesman, Julian Assange, came under attack from many quarters. The leaks were branded treasonous (although Assange is not American, but Australian). They were called dangerous, exposing many individual names that might have been redacted by traditional media.

Then the American government, concerned about the release of classified and sensitive information, started applying pressure to various websites who hosted the site. They applied pressure to financial institutions that made Wikileaks possible. And of course, Assange was eventually arrested on unrelated charges.

Meanwhile, we saw one of the first examples of cyber-terrorism: attacks against the electronic infrastructure of those institutions who were seen as anti-Wikileaks through the withdrawal of their support.

The Internet, a global communications network, completely bypasses the control of a national government. It also bypasses traditional media controls. The priests of modern power are being challenged.

Once, many people believed themselves in thrall to the church, and left it. Many people now define themselves, primarily, as citizens of a particular country.

How will today's nations, from China to the United States, respond to an explosion of a new kind of literacy, of direct access to information that used to be a privilege of power?

And once average citizens open that door to unmediated knowledge, will their national allegiance survive?

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LaRue's Views are his own.

January 6, 2010 - hold that thought! by David Farnan

2011-01-06T09:36:00.000-08:00

[This column is by David Farnan, Associate Director of Community Services for the Douglas County Libraries.]

I recently had dinner with some volunteers from Parker Library. As you can imagine, their reasons for volunteering were as diverse as the group itself. A few were retired and wanted to give back to the community. Another woman wanted to teach someone to read. Another wanted to keep busy while she searched for another job.

One told me that she used the library hold service so heavily, she felt guilty about it. She figured she should pitch in at the library.

What do we have her doing? Shelving hold materials.

Holds is one of the most popular services at Douglas County Libraries. Patrons request books through our website, and receive a call, email, or text when their item comes in. Around 30,000 people use the system annually. Among those polled, more than half indicated it was not just their preferred method of using the library. It was their only method.

The holds service is also one of our most costly services.

It costs around $2 to circulate an item. This includes everything –the item, labor, self-check machines, sorters, software, computers, buildings, utilities, salaries, everything.

Placing a hold adds about sixty cents per item. Most of this cost is labor – staff to search for and reshelve the item. Nearly one-third of the costs are for infrastructure - courier costs for shipping items from location to location, and a pro-rated percent of the technology that makes the system work.

Sixty cents a book may not sound like much, but we do around 1.7 million holds annually. The popular service
is growing at nearly twice the rate of regular checkouts.

So what’s wrong with this model? It’s convenient. Patrons love it.

Here’s the rub. Almost 15% of the holds are never picked up. That translates to about 500 unclaimed items a day.

I don’t begrudge those items. Things come up. In a way, the 15% not picked up is the price of doing business.

But it’s a hefty price that needs to be reduced. If we could eliminate that 15%, it would allow us a year or so of growth in holds with no added costs.

A library taskforce recently analyzed the holds service and recommended some changes.

One recommendation was to reduce the number of holds per patron to 50 from 99. The taskforce found a correlation between unclaimed items and having a lot of items on hold. 50 books and movies is a lot to be waiting for. I have no idea what I could do with 99. Personally, 50 seems generous.

We knew the new restriction would affect around 300 patrons - less than 1%. We also knew that patrons with 50+ holds were likely “power users” – folks who love libraries and visit at least weekly, are serious about reading, and unafraid to tell us when we go astray. I notified staff of the change in policy, and let them know we could expect to hear from all of the patrons affected. We nearly did.

The day before my dinner with the volunteers, we implemented the first change in our holds policy.

Remember the volunteer who used the holds service so much? She was one of the 300.

We are having a nice dinner, telling stories, laughing, and suddenly she realizes I am the person responsible for restricting her holds from 99 to 50. She carefully explains to me that she knows how to manage her card, and always picks up her items on time.

Seriously, I hate policies that seem punitive. I told her I really didn’t want her to read fewer books, but I needed to reduce the cost of the service and the number of items not picked up. I give her a few tips for how to keep items on a “wish list” without actually putting them on hold.

She understood. But suddenly my chicken didn’t look so good. I consider making a run for the dessert table for a nice chocolate brownie.

No, I know. I’ll order it and pick it up later. Or not.

P.S. If you’ve got an itch, we could use a few more volunteers to search for, and shelve holds.

December 30, 2010 - give an ebook to the library

2010-12-30T08:33:00.000-08:00

Years ago I visited a cluster of libraries in north Texas. One of the library directors told me that their equivalent of a county commissioner couldn't see a reason to buy new books for the library. He said, "People haven't read all the old ones yet!"

And he was right. But the modern library, like the modern grocery or clothing store, survives on fresh inventory.

So what happens to the old stuff? In library jargon, materials that don't get used (which often includes older materials) are "weeded." They are removed from our collection.

Maybe that makes you sad. But in truth, this is one of the great untold success stories of libraries. Such books aren't just tossed into dumpsters - unless they're 1958 encyclopedias or dangerously outdated textbooks.

There is a brisk after-market of library materials.

We give them to poorer libraries. We give them to charter schools. We give them to teachers. We give them to churches. We sell them individually in our own booksales, and by the lot to Amazon (which shares back a commission from each sale). We send them overseas to our soldiers, or in cooperation with civic groups to international schools. What can't be used is recycled.

The wonder of print is that its life after it leaves the library is just beginning. What is weeded from our shelves blooms in many other hands (and may show up in library booksales more than once!).

I view this as perfectly in keeping with the mission of the library. We buy a lot of books, about 150,000 a year. But we also weed about that many. Bottom line? Combined, every year, we release about a third of a million titles into our communities, all at a fraction of their original cost. The more books in people's homes and hands, the closer we come to fulfilling our goal to promote literacy.

Last week I wrote about our ebook project: e-Discover the Classics. We offer about 500 classic titles for free download. And in fact, just this week I re-read Conan Doyle's "Hound of the Baskervilles" and "She," by H. Rider Haggard. I read them, in fact, on my cell phone, which proved remarkably convenient.

There's a lot to be said for the classics. They're not just old. They're good!

But here's something you probably don't think much about. What's the after-market for ebooks?

If I buy a book, the odds are good that at some point I'll give it away. I want to share it with a friend. I want to donate it to the library to route it to someone else, as above.

How do I give away an ebook?

If ebooks really do start to displace print - a trend that seems likely, although print in some form will no doubt remain for a long time - that question matters. Ebook content is locked down to prevent casual sharing of a file. Obviously, if you can just email a book to somebody, then that cuts into sales by quite a lot.

But if you can't give it away, even though you bought it and supposedly own it, the net result is the disappearance of that aftermarket. Fewer cheap books. Fewer donated books.

Fewer books.

I've just been appointed to a national task force of the American Library Association to tackle this issue, among others. My idea is this: I'd like to launch a national campaign. In 2011, give an ebook to the library, so we can let other people read it. Don't know how to do that?

Shouldn't we figure it out?

---
LaRue's Views are his own.

December 23, 2010 - e-Discover the Classics

2010-12-23T09:45:00.000-08:00

We librarians know what’s going to happen. Especially after we hosted, in partnership with Best Buy, a couple of “tech petting zoos” to let people play with the latest gadgets, we’re sure that somewhere around Dec. 27, lots of people will bring their shiny new ebook readers to the public library, eager to scout out what we’ve got for them.

Most e-reader companies offer their own online stores. But that can get expensive. As I have learned for myself, you can spend more in an afternoon than you pay for the public library in a year!

It’s good to remember: libraries are a public purchasing cooperative. Why not leverage your library investment to gain access to books in this new format?

We already have something called Overdrive -- brand new ebooks (as well as audiobooks) that you can check out from us much like a regular library book. (Just click on “downloadables” from our library website at DouglasCountyLibraries.org.) That program works with several ebook readers, among them the iPad, the Sony eBook Reader, and the Nook. It does not work with the Kindle -- not because we don’t want it to, but because Amazon has its own, proprietary format.

Many epublishing vendors haven’t quite figured out how to deal with shared public content. They’re worried that library use will eat into private purchases. (In fact, libraries account for about a quarter of all book buying nationwide. We’re not only good to publishers, we grow the market for readers.)

Some vendors fear that ebooks will do to book publishers what file sharing did to music publishers: bypass the middle man altogether. And thus we have Digital Rights Management (DRM) issues to contend with.

Some vendors only offer their products through their own locked-down websites. That means you have to search our catalog, then search other websites. It’s inconvenient and time-wasting.

So I’m pleased to announce a statewide public library holiday special – e-Discover the Classics.

Thanks to the Colorado Library Consortium, your local library now offers almost 500 classic titles (419 ebooks, and 47 audiobooks), all downloadable for free. Harvested from Project Gutenberg, which features public domain and other freely accessible works, the e-Discover the Classics Collection is integrated right into our library catalog.

To find, for instance, “Jane Eyre” or “the Brother’s Karamazov” you can just search for them as usual. But there will be a new “tag” in the record: “click here to access a downloadable book.”

Do that, and you’ll be taken directly to the download page of Project Gutenberg, which has files in a variety of formats appropriate for your computer, your new ereader, or your cell phone.

Because these titles are copyright free, they’re yours. Keep ’em. Send the files to others. It’s perfectly legal. And five hundred titles isn’t a bad beginning for your personal elibrary.

We’ll also highlight a nice, compact list of the titles on our website, so you can just work through them as a project.

Finally, we’ve also put up a page where people can find useful links for using their new ebook readers, or leave questions and comments. It’s here: http://blogs.douglascountylibraries.org/ediscovertheclassics/.

An example of our tips: I highly recommend the free e-content management software called Calibre (http://calibre-ebook.com/). It should be one of the first programs you install on your computer after you get your new reader. It works with most file formats and devices.

Publishers do have to change with the times. So do libraries. But there’s still a place for thoughtful public exploration, collaborative purchasing, and the fearless advocacy of literacy and lifelong learning.

Your public library: it’s what’s next in reading.

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LaRue’s Views are his own.

December 16, 2010 - think globally to reform education

2010-12-16T11:24:00.000-08:00

I've been accumulating strong opinions about K-12 public education over the past few years. Let me try to do three things this week: lay out what the problem is, point out some of the key obstacles to reform, and offer a few of my own suggestions for creating a world class American education system.

The problem: according to a number of studies (see the Programme for International Assessment, for instance, which measures the educational achievement of 15-year-olds), the United States doesn't even make the top ten in reading ability, math or science.

A few months ago I reviewed a sample of world literacy studies. The conclusion was stark: the current generation of American students may be the first in the history of our nation to be less well-educated than its parents.

We wouldn't accept that kind of performance at the Olympics, where the United States does very well. But athletic performance won't help us compete in global economic markets.

And the issue is more than us winding up as the cheap, dumb labor of the world. We need smart people here at home, too.

Key obstacles: local control. This premise, this article of faith, seems to unite liberals and conservatives. But review the data above. It doesn't work.

When it comes to education, we are regularly outperformed by nations who adopt clear and consistent national standards. Comparing student performance within the state, or among states, just isn't good enough. There are Olympic educational standards, international benchmarks, and programs that work better than ours.

I would start with textbooks. American textbooks are almost uniformly bland, boring, bulky, and overpriced. We need a national library of short, clear, progressively more complex chapters, available to all, downloadable to any computer or ebook reader, easily printed into pamphlets.

Another obstacle: the enduring anti-intellectualism of our culture. Even within our schools, I see or hear about teachers, administrators and parents who don't approve of Gifted and Talented programs, or denigrate International Baccalaureate programs, yet do support competitive sports.

Studies done right here in Colorado demonstrate that one of the key predictors of academic success is the presence of a strong school library program. And yet the average age of the books in Colorado school libraries today is 15 years.

We know what works. And we don't do it.

Another obstacle: deliberately misleading politics. How often have you heard the statement, usually attempting to justify vouchers, "I should be able to use my tax money as I please. After all, it's my money!"

In 2009, my Douglas County School District property tax came to $700. If I'm going to claim $5,000 a year or so to send my son to a local Christian school, then I'm not just using my money. I'm using yours, too. I'm using a lot of people's.

Claiming public money to teach my children that, for instance, the world is only 6,000 years old and that evolution is false, not only violates the First Amendment's prohibition against the establishment of religion, but it also won't get us any closer to international competitiveness in the sciences. It's bad civics and bad educational policy.

So what to do about it all? I think we need to think globally. Let's stop blaming teachers for their failure to execute an incoherent educational policy. Let's do what honest scientists and sports trainers do: look at the evidence.

Who does the best job educating their young, and how do we adapt their lessons and improve on them?

Right now, that isn't us.

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LaRue's Views are his own.

December 9, 2010 - charter choice leads to same results

2010-12-09T09:58:00.000-08:00

There are many kinds of educational choice in Douglas County. There's public education at your local school. There's open enrollment, where you can move your child from one neighborhood public school to another. There's public education through charter schools. There's private education, whether secular or religious. There's homeschooling.

Which is right? It depends, naturally enough, on both the wishes of the parents and the needs of the child. I know from overseeing literacy programs through the years that no matter what the current educational philosophy is, it fails a consistent percentage of the student population. We don't all learn the same way, and any rigid approach to teaching inevitably misses the mark for some.

As an early advocate of charter schools, I believe in the value of experimentation. But I try to be honest about the results, too.

For instance, I don't see much press about the well researched results presented in The State of Charter Schools in Colorado: 2008-2009.

It has a lot of data, too much to summarize here. But I will quote this to give the larger context: "During the 2007-2008 school year, 141 charter schools operated in the state of Colorado. ... Charter school enrollment in 2007-2008 represented 6.9% of the total public school enrollment. If all of the charter schools were combined into an imaginary district, the enrollment of that district would be the fourth largest in the state. Of the 133 charter schools that responded to the survey, 66% of charter schools (88) stated there was a waiting list/lottery pool for their school. The average waiting list size was 462 students, ranging from two to 7,500, and the statewide total was 38,374."

In Douglas County, again in 2007-2008, there were 58,723 students in the whole district. There were 6,580 students enrolled in charter schools, a little over 11% of our total student population.

So clearly, there's an interest and a need for alternative education. But how well does it do?

The report presents school statistics by ethnicity, special needs, and details student performance in reading, writing, and math. Here's the bottom line: in most areas, charter schools are a lot like public schools. In the areas of reading and math, Colorado charter school students often do better than their public school counterparts in grades 6, 7, and 8. But that reverses in high school; they do poorer.

Homeschoolers tend to do much better in elementary years, too. But not all parents feel themselves equipped to teach higher math and physics.

Public education has a political dimension. It is the place where we want to acculturate waves of immigrants, and to forge patriotic citizens (the Pledge of Allegiance and civics), yet also to encourage critical thinking. It is the place where we wish to feed the hungry (the school lunch program). It is the place where we wish to grow public health awareness (required vaccinations, sex education, drug education). It is the place where we want to ensure the physical fitness of our young (P.E. programs). It is the place where we want to nurture and excite tomorrow's technologists (through Science/Technology/Engineering/Math programs); it is the place where we want to shelter them from the wickedness of the theory of evolution (see attempts to insert "intelligent design" into science classes).

It is a place where so much is expected, even when the expectations are profoundly self-contradictory, that success is a long shot.

In fact, I believe Douglas County has offered my children an excellent education, although I had to pay close attention.

But the truth is, America's primary and secondary public education system is quickly falling behind the rest of the world. Simply offering more "choices" that produce pretty much the same results isn't much of a plan.

Next week, I'll speak frankly about some of the other problems that come with "choice," and begin to sketch what real educational reform might look like, and why we need it.

---
LaRue's Views are his own.

December 2, 2010 - curricular reform is easy

2010-12-02T08:06:00.000-08:00

I am the result of two educational influences: public schools, and the public library.

Growing up as a boomer in the 50s and 60s, my typical class size was 34. I really don't recall that being a problem. School was generally better than home for me, and I had teachers with high expectations. I think we all got a pretty solid grounding in the basics.

I learned to speed read to get through my boring and tedious fourth grade social sciences textbook as quickly as possible. As I got older, I pretty much lived at the public library, and eventually was reading a book a day, seven days a week, mostly biographies and science fiction.

After college, and grad school, I really didn't think about formal education that much.

Until I had kids.

Like many earnest and clueless parents, I started to worry. Public education in the 1990s seemed very different from my own experience. I was already in Douglas County when there was something of a movement beginning. In brief, a small group of parents believed that there were very few, and very inconsistent standards for curriculum.

I started attending various school district meetings, and came to share that concern. Consider this: I know from working with European and Asian Rotary exchange students that a year in America doesn't even count toward their graduation. Almost all of our exchange students got straight As, not only because they tended to be smart, but because they had covered our content several years earlier.

If you go to school in Iowa, Minnesota, or Texas, then come to elementary school in Colorado, you'll find that you're about a year ahead.

Although the CSAP has changed this somewhat (and not always for the better), it's still true that if you move around the state, you'll find that there's not much curricular consistency from school district to school district. Even more amazing to me is the variance not only between schools within a district, but within classes at the same grade level in the same school building. That's because we have "local control" and "site-based management." Unlike most of the people I know, I think these policies serve our nation poorly.

After reading up on all this, my wife and I decided to homeschool our kids at least through the first grade. We believed it was important (a) to work through the developmental stages of play and values formation with them, instead of outsourcing that to crowds of other children, and (b) to lay a firm foundation of reading, writing, and math.

Oh, and (c) it was fun! We took our kids to libraries (of course!), plays, museums, concerts, national parks, shopping malls, local political and volunteer events, sporting events, and more. Children, all children, are just amazingly bright, and seeing their fascination with the world was rejuvenating for us, too.

Later, I was one of the original founders of Colorado's first parent-initiated charter school: Castle Rock's Academy Charter. A friend of mine, Laurel Iakovakis, and I pushed the Core Knowledge Curriculum, which was later adopted by many charters. Laurel was the first dean of the Parker Academy. Later still, I served on the Academy Charter School board. My daughter went to Academy Charter from grades 2 through 5 (then homeschool again for a year, then public school, then Douglas County High School's spectacular International Baccalaureate program).

I learned some valuable lessons through that experience. First, curricular reform is easy. It really is. You pick a philosophy, find supporting material, hire teachers who believe in your approach, and there you are.

Second, there's more to a school than curriculum. There's institutional finance, and governance, and personnel management, and extra-curricular activities, and a confounding mix of contrary expectations by the parents.

I mention all this to begin to lay the ground work for a consideration of "choice" in public education. As I hope my experience makes plain, I've dabbled in a fair amount of it.

But next week I'd like to talk not just about choice, but about results. Eventually, we'll get around to the topic of the day: vouchers.

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LaRue's Views are his own.

November 25, 2010 - English language still declining

2010-11-14T08:49:00.000-08:00

Recently, a colleague sent me a link to George Orwell's essay on "Politics and the English Language." (One version can be found here.) In it, Orwell, author of both "1984" and "Animal Farm," takes aim against what he calls "the decline of language." He provides many examples.

The essay was published in 1946. But its insights remain fresh. For instance, he writes, "In our time it is broadly true that political writing is bad writing." Few who endured the recent election season would argue with that one.

He continued, "Where it is not true, it will generally be found that the writer is some kind of rebel, expressing his private opinions and not a 'party line.' Orthodoxy, of whatever color, seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style."

That's true, too. In print, as in conversation, when people start repeating themselves, it's because they have run out of anything new to say. They invest the cliché and its repetition with a belief in its wisdom. Such clichés are comforting to some, like the choral response of a prayer.

Under the section, "Meaningless Words," he writes, "The word Fascism has now no meaning except insofar as it signifies 'something not desirable.'" Substitute "socialism" for "fascism," and it could be 2010.

Don't believe me? Next time somebody uses the term around you, ask him or her to define it. Then ask if professional fire departments fit the definition, and if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

Orwell also quotes from my favorite Old Testament book, Ecclesiastes. "I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all." Such strong, clear, wonderful writing!

Then he translates it into what passed for educated prose in 1946. "Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account."

That reminds me of my favorite sentence, whose mellifluous rhythms so enchanted me as a child that I memorized it: "Crest has been shown to be an effective decay preventive dentifrice that can be of significant value when used in a conscientiously applied program of oral hygiene and regular professional care." Or as my mother put it, "brush your teeth and go to the dentist every six months, or your teeth will fall out."

It's fun to find bad examples of language. But Orwell offered some positive suggestions, too.

(i) Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

(ii) Never use a long word where a short one will do.

(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

(iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.

(v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

(vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

It's not bad advice ... for a socialist.

----
LaRue's Views are his own.

November 18, 2010 - learning to live in the cloud

2010-11-08T09:24:00.000-08:00

I started using a Palm Pilot (as it was known back then) in July of 2000. It took another year to pick up a mobile phone. It wasn't until 2008 that I finally combined both into one device: a "smart phone" called the Palm Centro.

When you carry a gizmo around for 10 years, particularly one that uses the same basic software, you accumulate a lot of "data." In my case, beyond calendar and contact information, that meant newspaper columns, talks, essays, poetry, and journal entries. I used my Palm not only to organize my schedule, but also to think: to outline ideas, to record significant events that challenged or confirmed my beliefs.

But as my life and job have grown more complex, I find that my schedule doesn't really belong to me anymore. Having to "sync" my device with a variety of other computers got to be a tangle of cords, broken connectors, and mismatched calendars. Although the Palm Centro was great in many ways, it had a very poor web browser.

It was time to go to the cloud: syncing my data to the wireless Web.

It turned out that I was due for a new phone anyhow, so I just decided to take the plunge. I now possess (or am possessed by) the latest Palm Pre. (I almost went with an Android phone, and that would have been a good choice, too.)

The Pre is gorgeous, sleek and elegant. Years ago, I was a software reviewer, and have always paid close attention to the clarity and consistency of the user interface. The Pre is far more like the iPhone than the Palm Centro. That's not surprising, as former Apple executive, Jon Rubinstein, is said to have worked on the Pre.

I worked through the key issues in just a few days.

Step one: conversion. I needed to capture my over 1,000 contacts and many thousands of calendar entries. Palm provided a utility that did it in about half an hour. I also had to figure out how much of all that extra data really mattered. Answer: not much. But some of it did, and that was a little trickier.

Step two: learning curve. I poked around on the Pre itself, and watched some online videos. Finally, I checked out a "Complete Idiot's Guide" from the library, and paged through it a couple of nights. That was the right sequence for me: play, visuals, text. Bottom line: it took about four days to get remarkably comfortable with how the Pre operated.

Step three: rethinking my work flow. The Pre is Web-centric. I've had a Google account for a long time but didn't really use it much. So I had to spend some time understanding how Google Docs works, and getting more familiar with the calendar and contacts applications.

Step four: rethinking security. If I was going to be linking my life across various websites and services, I needed to be more thoughtful about passwords. I locked down the Pre itself, then adopted a new password scheme, based on a dynamic pattern rather than either a common password, or one so unique to each site that I had to write it down.

Step five: a moment of nostalgia. Really, would it be so bad to go back to the simple moleskin notepad? I fingered them avidly at Tattered Cover. Notebooks are cool. They never have to be recharged.

Step six: adjusting to life in a new world. I downloaded a few new apps (ebook reader, a more robust notes database, sudoku, an outliner). I'm finding that I like the Pre a lot. It's fun to learn new things.

For many, the smart phone is becoming both indispensable tool and window to the world. I'm looking forward to finding better ways to deliver library services in that environment.

---
LaRue's Views are his own.

November 11, 2010 - library takes community to the world

2010-11-05T06:51:00.000-07:00

I've been spending a lot of time lately reading, thinking, and talking about the trends of ebook and self-publishing. Just this week, I got another example that also falls into the area of "local history."

Perry Park resident Pati Palumbo (who also happened to have taught my daughter years ago at the Academy Charter School) has recently published "Pathways of Perry Park: 1870-2010." Like the John Fielder work that inspired her, Palumbo started with historic photographs of frontier photographer William Henry Jackson. Jackson had taken a number of photographs of Perry Park in 1870. Palumbo found the same spots, and retook the photographs today.

The book contrasts the black and white photos on one side with extravagantly colorful modern pictures. Also included are other pages from the original book, which was apparently a kind of real estate brochure.

It's fascinating to see how place names change over the years. "Old Saguache" is now "Indian Head Rock." One meadow was once known as "The Vale of Cashmere." And this is a perfect time to interject some florid 1817 poetry by Thomas Moore.

Who has not heard of the Vale of Cashmere,
With its Roses the brightest that earth ever gave.
Its temples, and grottos, and fountains as clear
As the love-lighted eyes that hang over their wave!

....
And the wind, full of wantonness, woos like a lover
The young aspen trees till they tremble all over.

You just don't see a lot of poetry in today's real estate fliers.

These days, the Vale of Cashmere is known as the Big D. The "Washington Monument" is now "Sentinel Rock." "The Green and Silent Valley" is now a golf course. And one formation is now Dark Vader Rock.

Poetry gives ways to prose. But the magic of the "mystic valley" persists.

Palumbo created the book online at a place called Mixbook.com. This kind of one-off production might not have been picked up by a commercial publisher. But the ability to create the book herself (with a lot of help from family and friends) gave Palumbo a unique and deeply personal connection to it.

The original book was a gift from Mrs. Alda Pottenger, daughter of the Metlzer family that homesteaded Castle Rock. Her grandson, Chad Pottenger, married Palumbo's daughter Jeni. Chad and Jeni also assisted in the new book, mainly by finding the right shots.

The book is available for sale from www.pathwaysofperrypark.com.

What interests me about the book is not only its beauty, but that it illustrates a trend. In the 19th and 20th century, the job of the library was to bring the world to your community. But in the 21st century, the library is about taking your community to the world.

By collecting such works and making them available through our local catalog, we make it possible for people to learn more about Douglas County - somebody tracking the works of W. H. Jackson, for instance.

So we'll be adding the "Pathways of Perry Park" to our collection. It's worth a read.

P.S. I wanted to give a big shout out to Monique Sendze, the library's associate director of information technology. On November 1, 2010, she and her husband became American citizens. On November 2, she cast her vote, an act taken for granted by too many of us, but of great significance to her. Congratulations!

November 4, 2010 - NPR firing lame

2010-11-04T11:15:00.000-07:00

I listen to NPR, almost the only radio station I do listen to. I like it for several reasons.

* It covers international news. I find the British news shows particularly interesting. My daughter lived for a time in Germany, France, and Taiwan. Those places regularly get mentioned on NPR, not so much in most U.S. media.

* NPR covers science. "Science Friday" usually raises some topic that doesn't show up anywhere else. I think science is important.

* They do breaking and in-depth news. Often, I hear something on NPR several days before I see it in the paper. They also dig into a story, not just present a 30 second sound bite. I found their coverage from China - right after the 2008 Sichuan earthquake - riveting.

* Some of its shows, "A Prairie Home Companion" and "This American Life" for instance, often make me laugh, or present music and perspectives I appreciate.

Last week, I discussed the problem of "accidental extremism" -- what happens when you pay attention only to one voice in the political spectrum. It's fair to wonder: do people who listen only to NPR run the same risks as people who watch only Fox News?

The answer, of course, is yes.

Fox may have gone to court to defend its right to distort the news (as I talked about last week). But this week, we have the far more recent case of NPR firing one of its distinguished "news analysts," Juan Williams.

Why? Because while appearing on Fox's "The O'Reilly Factor" on October 18, 2010, Williams said, "...when I get on a plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous."

Why was that a firing offense? According to NPR’s CEO, Vivian Schiller, "News analysts may not take personal public positions on controversial issues; doing so undermines their credibility as analysts..."

Well, that seems pretty lame to me. Williams is a smart guy. His admission of discomfort at this moment in our history just makes him human.

Sure, "Muslim garb" can be tricky. Can you tell the difference between Afghani headgear and Sikh? I can't. But the comment reminded me of Jesse Jackson, who once reported that when he walked down an urban street at night, then was approached by strangers, he was sometimes relieved if they turned out to be white.

The issue here is lingering fear. Some of it may be statistical, or anecdotal, or even irrational. But all of us carry it around with us. Jesse Jackson wasn't arguing for racial profiling. Williams wasn't suggesting a new Crusade.

Firing Williams isn't censorship. NPR isn't the government. They can employ anyone they like. And in fact, Williams has apparently been offered a lucrative contract ($2 million over three years!) by Fox, who is delighted by the whole affair. Williams won't be injured by the deal.

The call from the conservative crowd immediately went up to end government funding for NPR. But that only accounts for about 2% of their budget. As any regular listener knows, most of the funding comes from irritating on air requests for pledges.

But they work. That means that the people who want it, pay for it. I do myself. At $15 a month, it's exactly three times what I pay for library services through my taxes.

If we're ending government funding for private concerns, does that include subsidies to oil companies, loggers, ranchers, and others? Which pot of money do you reckon is bigger?

Nonetheless, this flap does dent the credibility of NPR, at least in my eyes. It makes me pay a little more attention to them, to be a little more thoughtful, a little more critical, about what they tell me.

Ultimately, against accidental extremism, that's the only protection we have.

----
LaRue's Views are his own.

October 28, 2010 - accidental extremism on the rise

2010-10-21T10:21:00.000-07:00

Years ago, I lived in a small Arizona town. A guy at the local watering hole told me that radio played a big role in his life. "We get both kinds of music now," he said proudly. "... country AND western."

That old joke captures a lot of what I heard in a recent talk by John Creighton (johncr8on.com). He was speaking to a group of librarians about various trends in our society. One of those trends was something he called "accidental extremism."

According to Creighton, people tend to put themselves in the middle of groups. Few of us set out to live on the fringe. But in the age of talk radio, in the age of niche television programming, in the age of the Internet, it's much easier to find people who share the same general mindset.

For instance, conservatives listen to Rush, and watch Fox News. (Incidentally, I was just reading about FOX News. Back in February 2003, they appealed a previous court decision awarding damages to reporters Fox fired because they refused to run false reports. According to a report by one Mike Gaddy, Fox lawyers "asserted that there are no written rules against distorting news in the media. They argued that, under the First Amendment, broadcasters have the right to lie or deliberately distort news reports on public airwaves." The Florida Court of Appeals agreed with them: it's legal to lie. I guess that's true, too. But it's hardly "fair and balanced.")

Of course, the trend of selective media consumption, and of overt political bias, is not unique to conservatives. It applies to liberals and libertarians, to Green Party and Tea Party activists.

The point is that, over time, we stop hearing from people who don't already agree with us. And in the narrow world we inhabit, opinions that might have looked pretty "out there" a few years ago suddenly seem perfectly normal. We might still be in the middle of our group, but that group has itself strayed from the ever-elusive "mainstream America."

And there we are: accidental extremists.

I think Creighton is right. Speaking as a librarian, I can tell you that very few people seek out perspectives that challenge their fundamental beliefs. Rather, we read things that reinforce them. It feels good to be right.

And boy, can we get mad when we run across something that reinforces another group's beliefs!

But one of the most fundamental mistakes of predicting the future is the notion that a trend will continue forever. One might look at the trend of accidental extremism and say, "this leads to anarchy." We will inevitably splinter into ever smaller and weirder groups, which themselves will get ever more righteous and angry and insular.

But everything changes. At some point, the forces that drive those trends, whether welcome or worrisome, just give out. There is a rhythm to social forces. Some push us apart. Others pull us together.

To every trend there is a counter-trend. I'd be interested to hear from people about trends that actually bring people together across lines that previously divided them. If you know of any, send them to me at jlarue at jlarue.com. I'll summarize them in this column.

Hint: it ISN'T country western music. Not to those of us raised on Motown.

------
LaRue's Views are his own.

October 21, 2010 - be kind

2010-10-15T08:16:00.000-07:00

I remember reading a great comic book when I was a kid.

The time was the not-too-distant future. People had anti-gravity swimming pools in their back yards. They got to wear clothes sort of like superhero costumes.

Most folks of that age were very materialistic. But while the society was both global and mostly prosperous, not every one enjoyed prosperity.

There was one gentle young man who visited the old, and spent most of his time helping others on the fringe. He was universally mocked. It didn't bother him much.

One day, a flying saucer arrived, and hung over the global capital. They had a simple demand. They wanted that guy. They wouldn't show themselves to anyone in the world government. They weren't interested in setting up diplomatic relations, or trade. They just kept saying they had come for that guy.

So the government finally asked the guy if he'd go. Seeing how frightened everyone was, he accepted.

And found, when they floated him up to the flying saucer and it headed off to Galactic Central, that the folks from outer space had chosen him to be the Emperor of the Universe. "But I have no interest in power!" he said.

"That's why we picked you," they said. "That's how we always pick our Emperors. It works very well."

It seems like a pretty good system to me, too. I've just come back from a couple of emergency backup speaker gigs, traveling around libraries in the West. Politics is in the air.

I've been thinking about the pursuit of power, and find that few people can articulate just why they want it. Even when they do tell you, you get the sense that they have something else in mind.

I'm not even sure I believe in power. Speaking as the leader of an organization, a husband, a father, a friend, and even a citizen, I think the quest for control is mostly a waste of time. You have influence, sure. You can lean things a little one way or the other - a little better (you hope), or a little worse (sometimes despite your best efforts). If you pay attention, it makes you humble.

One of the things I talked about in my travels was renewal. Everybody gets burned out sometimes, and right now, the cause is often politics or budget troubles (and often, they're the same).

At such times, it's useful to hearken back to a few simple things:

* breathe. Just noticing the air moving in and out of your body can be wonderfully calming.

* laugh. People are funny. And the funnier they are, the more familiar they become. You think, "that could (or did) happen to me." By and by, humor starts to look a lot like compassion.

* look around. Our world is beautiful. Over the past couple of weeks, autumn has arrived. Its signs differ from one part of the West to other. Sometimes subtle, the tones of the landscape work magic on the soul. Change is coming, inevitably.

Several themes emerged from my many conversations. People sense that we've swung a pendulum about as far as it can go in the direction of angry entitlement. It could be that it's time to try to locate a little common ground, a little kindness.

Because let's remember: it just might be the only way to get in the running for Emperor of the Universe.

--
LaRue's Views are his own.

October 14, 2010 - vote No on the Bad 3

2010-10-07T05:45:00.000-07:00

So you go to the doctor and he says, "I'd like you to lose some of that weight." You think, "You could lose a few yourself, doc!" but what you say is, "So are we talking a diet? Exercise? I can do that!"

But he frowns at you. "I'm afraid I have some bad news and some good news. The bad news is, I want you to lose weight faster than that. We're going to have to amputate your leg."

"What's the good news?" you exclaim.

"To give you time to get used to it, we're going to amputate in stages!" He demonstrates: a whack at the knee, then mid-thigh, then at the hip.

That little scenario is pretty much the combined effect of Amendments 60 and 61, and Proposition 101, the Bad Three.

Honestly, I've been listening to and reading what the proponents say. While it pains me to be so uncivil, I don't know what else to call their claims but lies. Some proponents have stated in highly public forums and the press that no one will lose their jobs, that the effect is only something like a 2% reduction in "government" spending.

Have they not read their own proposals? As noted in previous columns, Amendment 60 alone would reduce the revenues of the Douglas County Libraries by more than half, effective January 1, 2011. If that should happen, over 170 library workers would lose their jobs shortly thereafter. Not 4 or 10 years from now.

That's certainly bad for hard-working and conscientious library employees, and the economy. But more to the point for our community, the services used so intensively by you, our patrons, would be harshly curtailed.

Some branches would close altogether, despite their value as community centers. Our new materials purchases - books, music, and movies - would be reduced by half as well, despite our having one of the highest per capita uses of those materials in the nation.

Based on our patterns of use, we would start cutting hours at the three or four branches that remain. Although plenty busy by any standard, some hours are less busy than others. Evenings would be first to go. That means no more night meetings at the library, which are currently booked out as much as a year in advance.

Over the past year or so, libraries all across the country have been seeing a big surge of use by people who use our resources to retool. They learn to write resumés, they search for jobs online, they write business plans for start-up companies. This would not be a good time for them to lose library access.

I've been involved in various Douglas County communities for a long time, and I've learned something nobody talks much about. The quality of our lives depends on two strong legs: the private sector, and the not-for-profit.

Business cannot and does not thrive without an ongoing investment in infrastructure: roads, schools, libraries, water, public safety. Some people protest business regulation. Yet those laws, inspections, fees, and our courts create something without which no business can long survive: a predictable and consistent environment that promotes the common good.

Don't believe me? See Haiti.

Likewise, the not-for-profit sector depends on the productivity of business. Humans need to make things, grow things, build things. Those activities not only celebrate achievement, but also create wealth. A percentage of private profits returns to the not-for-profit sector, investing in and sustaining that shared environment.

Both business and government, being human enterprises, are only as good as the ones who work in them. Both need to be watched, and both need to be put on a diet every now and then.

But blindly hacking off one of your legs isn't a diet. It's just a good way to make it impossible to stand.

------------
LaRue's Views are his own.

October 7, 2010 - my colleagues I salute you

2010-10-01T15:49:00.000-07:00

The last time I went to Durango, I drove over Red Mountain pass at night, during a snow storm. By the time I got down, my knuckles were as white as the ice in my tire treads.

I had gone to Durango to run a workshop for Sherry Taber, then the new library director. She was trying to pull together a committee to build a desperately needed new library.

It took years. But just before her retirement, she made it happen. A few weeks ago, I returned to Durango, and visited the now 2-year old library with Andy White, the gracious new director. The building is gorgeous. Nestled against the river, narrow gauge rails and a bicycle path, the library embraces sky and setting.

The next day, I drove down to Farmington, NM. The public library director there is Karen McPheeters - a firecracker of intelligence and energy who also put years into securing the funding, designing, and now operating one of the most impressive libraries in the nation.

Karen was the first director I knew to adopt the "self check and automated material handling" technologies that we use. I had sent some people to her library to scope it out before we invested in it. Karen was, and still is, some ten years ahead of the rest of the library world. She has a corporate background, and brings that focus sharply to bear on her systems.

The library also reflects many of the beliefs of the Native American tribes in the area, from its floor plan to its orientation to the solstices. By being totally of its place, the Farmington Public Library succeeds in doing something else: it's world class.

Then I accompanied Paul Paladino, director of the Montrose Library District, back to his house. He showed me his new home project: he built a "casita" for his mom, attached to his own house. It's a straw bale building, and it uses the same processes that he used for the first straw bale library in the state, and only the second in the nation. That library is in Naturita, and is now a year old.

The 4,500 square foot building in Naturita is all electric, and has bills that vary from $200 to $300 a month, which is phenomenally cheap. The community actually helped build it. Like Paul's casita, the library is cool and comfortable. I was fascinated by the chemistry of the earth plaster then lime wash finish. A combination of those two makes a wall that actually heals its own cracks and gets stronger over time. Paul is a master craftsman, and more than one kind of builder.

Oh, and on my way out to Durango, I stopped in the new Penrose Community Library, where Jean Christensen, the assistant director, gave me a tour. It's a beautiful adobe building.

Then I spent a night in Salida, where director Jeff Donlan invited me to a packed public program they hosted about Burma. He was (as always) literate, witty, and clearly comfortable in the role of community convener.

While each building I saw was unique, there was also something they had in common. Every one of these libraries was alive not only with people and materials, but also with art, with public technology, with inviting spaces for individual sanctuary and social contact.

Colorado is a stunningly beautiful place (as is northern New Mexico). But what really made those towns sparkle for me was this: the forward-thinking and innovative management of the public library.

My colleagues, I salute you.

---
LaRue's Views are his own.

September 30, 2010 - come out, come out, whoever you are

2010-09-23T11:00:00.000-07:00

When I was 11 or 12 years old I rode my black Schwinn bicycle everywhere.

It was a lot of work, for two reasons.

First, all my favorite places - the library (of course), the Illinois Beach State Park, the YMCA - were miles apart.

Second, the aliens were after me. See, I was doing a lot of reading about UFOs. It seemed pretty clear to me that the people most interested in the phenomena were the ones most likely to be abducted. And probed, which didn't sound pleasant.

So when I was tearing around town, I took maximum advantage of tree cover. I dodged through parks and alleys. I made sudden and unexpected turns. I doubled back to take weird short cuts.

Crazy? you ask. Maybe. But consider this: They never got me.

And speaking of pursuit and concealment, I've been trying to puzzle out who is really behind Proposition 101, and Amendments 60 and 61. I started like this: Who actually benefits from these measures?

I can only come up with two candidates.

The first is economic development people in states other than Colorado. Private and public sector people both will certainly flee a state whose civic infrastructure is collapsing. That's not idle conjecture. See California.

The second prospect might be closer to home. The provisions of these initiatives allow property owners to vote anywhere they have land, and slash away at property taxes across the board.

Who wins from that arrangement? Nobody who actually lives in a community, and has to deal with the quality of roads, schools, and libraries, or the response of fire and police departments. You just need an insurance policy, right? And a steady stream of renters.

So here's another answer to the question of "who benefits?": Absentee landlords.

I justify this speculation because somebody had to pay for all the petition printing and gathering. We should know who is pushing for sweeping constitutional changes, right? Under the law, people who spend that kind of money on political measures are required to declare themselves.

Except they didn't.

Now it is true that several of the sponsors admitted to a federal judge that they got a lot of help from Doug Bruce, an absentee landlord who has pushed similar measures in the past. So a court asked Bruce to come in and answer some questions about what looked like a crime.

They tried, anyhow. Court officers attempted to deliver a summons. Thirty times. They left cards and notices at Bruce's residence in the morning, in the afternoon, at night. No one would answer the door.

Meanwhile, lights went on and off. Someone set out the garbage. The cards and notices disappeared.

You have to admire it. Doug Bruce is as wily as a tween on a bike. They couldn't catch him.

On the other hand, a judge did finally rule the proponents "evasive and unbelievable." And fined them.

I strive mightily to resist the pull of cynicism. But I have to ask: If you're trying to change the law, it's because you think people should follow the law, right? If the proponents are convinced that Amendments 60 and 61, and Proposition 101 are truly good for us, then they should stop sneaking around, and come out and debate it. What's to hide?

Unless - and this just occurred to me - there's a third possibility. It would explain everything. What if this is a conspiracy of ... aliens?

------

LaRue's Views are his own.

September 23, 2010 - "it takes a village ...to eat the leftovers"

2010-09-15T14:06:00.000-07:00

I can just hear it now. Cue exasperated parent: "What are you going to do with a degree in Spanish and Latin American Culture?" And then, later, "why on earth would anyone want to get a doctorate in anthropological linguistics?''

Answer (because it's so obvious): "I want to be a famous chef."

That would be Rick Bayless, best-selling author, award-winning restaurateur, TV show host, and once guest chef at the White House, where he prepared a state dinner honoring Mexico.

You never know where your studies are going to take you.

We've gotten quite a buzz about his coming to the library. Our "A Day with Rick Bayless" (Wednesday, October 13) is a busy one.

We sold out the exclusive lunch with him at the Old Blinking Light Restaurant in Highlands Ranch.

We also sold out the next event: at the Lone Tree Recreation Center, at 3 p.m., he'll do a cooking demo -- bacon-tomato guacamole and green herb ceviche, from his latest cookbook "Fiesta at Rick's: Fabulous Food for Great Times with Friends."

At 6 p.m. he'll show up at an author reception at the Wildlife Experience in Parker, followed by a special talk. (It's $60 for the reception, $30 for the talk.) You can even buy his latest book, at every one of the above events, courtesy of Tattered Cover.

We have a lot of sponsors for this one. I'm grateful to Chef Kevin Fitzgerald of Old Blinking Light, who will be cooking a Bayless tribute. I'm grateful to the Whole Foods Market, which is supplying ingredients for the Lone Tree cooking demo, and to Canon Catering/Taco Mojo for the equipment.

Other support has been provided by the Gay & Lesbian Fund for Colorado, Colorado Community Newspapers, the Wildlife Experience, Tattered Cover Bookstore, and Colorado Litho, Inc. A portion of proceeds will go to the Douglas County Libraries Foundation to support literacy activities.

It's not too late to join our sponsors. As part of a generous grant, the Gay & Lesbian Fund for Colorado will match new or increased donations made in 2010 or 2011 to Douglas County Libraries. Wanna put your money where your mouth is (so to speak)? Contact Katie Klossner at kklossner@dclibraries.org.

Want tickets to any of the above (except the ones that are sold out)? You can find tickets online at DouglasCountyLibraries.org, by phone at 303-791-7323, or in person at any Douglas County Libraries location.

We are very pleased to make this contribution to culture in Douglas County. And parents, next time, don't be so disparaging of your children's educational choices. They might just be a recipe for success.

Library Board to consider resolution on Amendments/Proposition

2010-09-08T07:21:00.000-07:00

At its September 16, 2010 meeting (7 p.m., Philip S. Miller Library in Castle Rock), the Board of Trustees will consider a resolution concerning Amendments 60 and 61, and Proposition 101. If those measures are successful, the Board anticipates the layoff of more than half the library staff, the potential closure of libraries at Castle Pines, Louviers, and Roxboroughs, and the significant reduction of hours in the remaining locations. Public comment will be welcome at the meeting.

September 16, 2010 - old days not so good

2010-09-06T09:47:00.001-07:00

How would you like to pay 25 cents a pound for rib roast?

Men, would you be willing to lay out $28 for a top-of-the-line suit? Ladies, could you afford $3.25 for a new woolen skirt?

Or maybe you've been hankering after a new car. Would you spend $826 for something right off the production line?

Or suppose you wanted to rent a modest 1,440 square foot house. Does $2 a week seem too steep for four rooms and a bath? Heck, buy it outright for just $4,101!

You might think that all sounds too good to be true. But that's what things cost back in 1919.

It may be nostalgia for the past that's behind Proposition 101, the third of the profoundly anti-government measures on the ballot this fall. (The other two are Amendments 60 and 61, considered in my previous two columns.)

Proposition 101 seeks to stoke the anger of people who saw their motor vehicle fees rise last year. Among its provisions is to "reduce vehicle ownership taxes over four years to nominal amounts." "Nominal" means $10 a year.

That's what it cost to register a car in 1919.

But Proposition 101 doesn't stop there. It also lowers the state income tax to 4.5%, then phases in a further reduction to 3.5%.

Anyone following the news over the past year knows that the state already cut over a billion dollars from its budget. If this goes through, the state will lose more than twice that. At the same time, if Amendment 60 goes through, the state will also have to backfill an additional $1.6 billion resulting from the drop in school property taxes.

As I noted in my last column, that leaves the state with the responsibility to give 99% of its money to local schools. No more roads. No more higher education. No more social services for children. And apparently, no more matching money for federal medical program payments, which may prove problematic for people who are not perfectly healthy.

But what does Proposition 101 mean for local governments? Let me give you an example closer to home.

Because motor vehicle fees are part of your property, the money is divvied up among various entities in your community that depend on property taxes. In 2009, the Douglas County Libraries, for instance, got $1.4 million. Once 101 is fully "phased in" that would drop to less than $10,000 a year. That's a 93% drop in revenue.

The same scale of reduction applies to the county, the school district, and every municipality, metro, fire, and water district.

Proponents of these measures describe them as "modest."

The best interpretation of this gleeful willfulness to slash government funding is that it is predicated on a profound civic ignorance. Government exists to perform functions we actually depend on - such as transportation systems, clean water, and an educated citizenry. Take away the investments that pay for those services, drive the revenue down below the costs, and your own life takes a dive.

Oh, and by the way, here's what nobody mentions when dreaming fondly of the good old days of 1919.

The average salary was $1,125. The life expectancy was 56.

September 9, 2010 - Amendment 61 reduces debt - and construction

2010-09-03T13:22:00.000-07:00

Suppose you decide it's time to move out of your rented apartment. You have some money, but not enough to buy a house outright. So, like millions of other Americans, you start shopping for a mortgage.

You quickly learn that the longer the term of the loan, the more house you can buy. The payments are lower, although of course it takes more time to pay it off. With a shorter term, you can't afford as much house. It might not even be worth it.

But now suppose your employer informs you of two new rules. First, your banker, if he gives you a loan at all, can only offer a ten year mortgage.

Second, your employer tells you that once you do pay off your mortgage, he is going to cut your salary by the amount of your monthly mortgage payment because hey, you don't need it anymore, right?

That set of new rules, applied to government instead of to citizens, is Amendment 61.

Under this proposal, Colorado - alone among all the United States - won't be able to borrow money at all. Other governments (schools, fire and water districts, libraries) can ask their bankers (the public) to approve a loan. In fact, they must have an election in order to borrow. But they have to pay back the loan in ten years.

Oddly, there is no ten year bond market for public projects.

Of course, the increased annual cost of projects that must be paid off in ten years means that there won't be as many. Or they'll be much smaller. That means a big reduction in the public construction projects that employ contractors, engineers, concrete and manufacturing suppliers, and more.

Think about such projects as the Denver International Airport, which then spurred the construction of roads, which then sparked housing developments, schools, and retail developments. Growth means jobs.

But now, in the midst of a recession, we have a proposal to cut jobs.

Some governments have been paying mortgages by thoughtfully managing their cash flow. But if Amendment 61 passes, once their mortgages get paid off, they have to lower their property tax rates by the amount of their payments. To put it in personal terms again: when you look after your money intelligently, you should get a pay cut!

There are many other wrinkles. A big one for Colorado concerns what is now a routine matter for many Colorado schools. Tax money doesn't come in evenly. Mainly, it is collected during May, June, and July.

That doesn't match up to the fiscal year. Many schools now run year round. So they borrow money from the state to get through the winter and spring. They pay it back promptly. But under Amendment 61, that borrowing stops, too, unless there's an election every year. That's likely to affect the school calendar.

There's also a new provision for the percentage of debt a school district can carry. The Colorado Legislative Council estimates that 36 school districts - representing about half the students in the state - would be unable to build any new schools at all, for perhaps as long as a decade.

This has nothing to do with the need for new schools. It doesn't even have to do with the willingness of the public to pay for them. It's just not allowed.

Again, the full text of the amendment - a change in the state constitution on the ballot this fall - can be found, along with arguments for and against, by Googling "ballotpedia Colorado 2010."

Look it over.

And ask yourself: if you couldn't afford to get a mortgage anymore, if shared infrastructure were now so expensive that you just couldn't pay for it, if the big public works that help our economy suddenly ratcheted back by a third or more, who would that benefit?

September 2, 2010 - Amendment 60 kills jobs

2010-09-03T13:19:00.000-07:00

09/02/2010 - amendment 60 kills jobs

Maybe you've heard this one. After a long and wicked life, Joe dies. He finds himself standing not at the pearly gates of heaven, but at the threshold of the underworld.

"Welcome to eternity!" says the devil. "And now, you have a choice on how to spend it."

He opens door number one. Three men are standing on their heads on a grassy lawn.

"What's behind door number two?" asks Joe. Three men are standing on their heads on concrete.

"Door number three?" asks Joe.

Three men stand up to their knees in human excrement. But they're drinking coffee. Joe thinks it through for a while, figures he would probably get used to the smell eventually, and at least he won't be thirsty.

"Door number 3," he decides.

As the door locks behind him, a voice comes over the loudspeaker. "Break's over. Back on your heads!"

Which leads me to this fall's ballot questions. Two of them are amendments to the state constitution (60 and 61). One of them is a proposition (101), which means it can be amended by the legislature.

All of them have a single purpose: to lower taxes.

Despite that simple summary, all of the measures are surprisingly complex. For a good, even-handed discussion of them, including arguments for and against, I highly recommend the Ballotpedia site (Google "ballotpedia colorado 2010").

This week, I'll focus primarily on Amendment 60. It has many provisions. I'll highlight just a few important ones:

* First, it overturns all local elections since 1992 that exempted local governments from Doug Bruce's TABOR restrictions. Those restrictions are restored.

* Second, any property tax increases that the voters approved during that time will be restated to the dollar amount specified in the original ballot question. So let's say the voters approved a mill levy increase of 2 mils in 1992. Back then, it generated $200,000 a year. But property values rose over the past 18 years. Let's say that last year, 2 mils equaled $1,000,000. Under Amendment 60, it goes back to $200,000.

* Third, it mandates the phased-in reduction of school property taxes by half, and requires the state to pick it up instead. The Colorado Legislative Council analysis says that this would require 99% of all state funding to go to local schools. It's not clear how it would pay for other mandated services.

As part of the library's budgeting process, we've tried to get a handle on just what these amendments, if approved by the state's voters (even if rejected by Douglas County), would mean for us.

I suspect that because these changes are so sweeping, they would likely be tied up in court for years to unravel all the implications. But the best analysis I can offer of the consequences of Amendment 60, for the library, is this:

* the first two provisions mentioned above would likely reduce our $21 million annual budget by over $11 million. That's a 52% cut.

* the library spends the bulk of its money on people. Currently, we employ 331 people to operate 7 libraries, most of them 7 days a week.

* to balance our budget, I would expect to lay off at least 172 people. Not because business is down, by the way. Libraries are busier than ever.

* with half as many people, it seems inevitable that all of our libraries would reduce their days and hours of operation. It seems likely that at least some of our libraries - the ones we rent rather than own - may close altogether.

People often say to government workers, "I pay your salary!" And if they're taxpayers, that's true. But they forget that we pay their salaries, too. Public employees go to the dentist, pay for kid's music lessons, buy car insurance, shop at the local grocery store, eat at local restaurants, pay for home repairs, and whittle away at their mortgages. Unless they don't have jobs.

In our economy, we're all connected. Eliminating an estimated 80,000 jobs statewide isn't likely to put more money in your pocket if fewer people can buy whatever you sell.

More about Amendment 61 and Proposition 101 next week. But for now, unlike old Joe, you might want to ask a few questions before your choose your future.

August 26, 2010 - volunteer to teach

2010-08-26T10:10:00.000-07:00

The fundamental mission of the Douglas County Libraries is to promote literacy and lifelong learning.

What results from such advocacy? Here's one of them: productive citizens.

Recently, I asked Kate Prestwood, who heads up Douglas County Libraries adult literacy efforts, to give me an update on the status of the program.

She responded with some wonderful stories both from tutors (volunteers we train to be teachers) and students. Some of our tutors are paired with students working on basic English or GEDs (a high school equivalency certificate). But we have a surprising number of international students.

One of them, of Asian origin, came to us because she was working at a big box retail store, and suspected that her use of English was a little odd. Thanks to volunteer help, she's passed a test to start moving up the retail chain's corporate ladder. These days, she addresses customers "politely." (Learning to speak English from watching television might well build up a repertoire of impolite expressions.)

A Russian aerobics instructor (who is also working another full time job) noted her increasing fluency in English. To thank her tutor, she made a custom CD of her favorite Russian music.

Another student, from eastern Europe, is working with her tutor to launch a new business. It's going well. And because of the student's growing confidence, she says, she now is starting to slip out from under the thumb of an overbearing mother-in-law.

Another woman, from South Korea, writes proudly (and grammatically!) about how she has put both of her daughters through American colleges, and finally has time to invest in her own education.

The consistent story of our students is this: through often extraordinary and inspiring work, they better themselves, they contribute to our society, they give their children a better life. And often, they invite their tutors to stand beside them on the proud day when they become American citizens.

Right now, we have 101 people matched with a tutor. Some tutors have more than one student. Others are still waiting to be paired up, although we have 80 students waiting for tutors, too. The disconnect here is mainly one of schedules. Many of the folks looking for tutors have work, school, or kids, and may be available, for instance, only on Tuesdays at 3:45 p.m.

Bottom line: we need more volunteers.

We also need volunteers interested in facilitating our Practice Your English groups at Highlands Ranch and Castle Rock. Parker has a great group of volunteers, and the Saturdays are always covered. But at Highlands Ranch and Castle Rock, we have a shortage. This is a group setting, not the usual one-on-one. But some people actually prefer this setting.

It is a privilege to live in this country. If you'd like not only to enrich your own life, but make a profound difference in the life of someone else, please consider volunteering your time in the service of literacy.

You can reach Kate Prestwood at 303-791-7323. Call today.

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LaRue's Views are his own.

August 19, 2010 - library teams with election office

2010-08-19T10:11:00.000-07:00

A few years ago now, the Douglas County Libraries consolidated most of our phone lines into a central Contact Center. This did two things for us. First, it let us get rid of a lot of annoying sounds and service interruptions in the public areas. Our staff can concentrate on the people who show up in our buildings.

The second thing was that it let us really monitor the number and type of calls we receive, bringing in a lot of eye-opening data. That data has helped us manage a host of operations more efficiently.

Our Contact Center people do more than answer the phones, though. They manage a number of projects, the most recent of which was our team-up with the Douglas County Elections Office. In brief, the county paid us to answer the phone for that office – and provided us the training to do so. This is our second year of providing this service.

The 2010 Douglas County election season officially opened on July 19th. Primary ballots were mailed out and voter questions began pouring in.

From 9am to 5pm Monday through Friday July 19th to August 10th, our Contact Center was the first line of response for election questions. In the first two days we received as many calls as we did in the entire 2009 election.

We answered 4-5 calls an hour and were able to assist 86% of the voters who called us. (We passed along to the election office the ones that stumped us.) All together, election calls accounted for 15% of our total volume for the election period.

What kinds of things did voters ask us? The common questions included: address corrections, how to affiliate with a party, and how much postage a ballot requires.

Voters didn't have to do anything special to get us. Voters dialed the usual election number, and we just switched it over to our people automatically. Our staff could tell how many people were calling, and which line they were coming in on. We kept careful track of statistics.

Having one of the more efficient contact centers around, I'm pleased to report that we are able to provide the service at a very competitive price. Each call costs the election office 87¢ to answer. The library can do it for 50¢. By tracking such things as "dropped calls" (calls that didn't get answered because they overwhelmed the available lines) we can also maintain much better than industry-standard rates for responsiveness.

Like a lot of businesses, the library has tightened up its expenditures. Using existing resources, we were able not only to provide high quality public information, but even to generate a modest amount of new revenue – at a cost that still saved money for the county.

I'd like to acknowledge not only the out-of-the-box thinking of our county elections people (and in particular, County Clerk Jack Arrowsmith), but also our Information Technology and Contact Center staff who made the process so seamless and effective.

I think the public appreciates knowing that independent arms of the government look for ways not only to provide useful service but also to save money together.

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LaRue's Views are his own.

August 12, 2010 - expert thinking

2010-08-12T10:12:00.000-07:00

In 2005 Philip Tetlock wrote a book called, "Expert Political Judgment: How Good is it? How can we know?"

To find out, he did something extraordinary. He went back and studied 50 years of writings by various media pundits and commentators who made predictions about politics and economics. Then he carefully tracked the results.

What did he find?

Experts don't do so good.

They were worse than random. As one reviewer noted: "Human beings who spend their lives studying the state of the world... are poorer forecasters than dart-throwing monkeys." It didn't make any difference if they were conservative or liberal.

The reasons for this appalling performance are many.

Reasonable people with modest opinions aren't that much fun to read. People who say outrageous things command more attention. But that doesn't mean they're right. In fact, the wilder they get, they less likely that is.

It's a twist on the old "hedgehog versus the fox" fable. The simple hedgehog knows One Big Thing (how to roll up into a prickly ball and ignore outside threats). The clever fox knows many things.

Most experts are hedgehogs. They fall in love with their own perspectives and are impervious to all the evidence to the contrary. It becomes a kind of arrogance.

Or as H. L. Mencken once said, "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."

Foxes, on the other hand, are wary of big ideas that explain everything. They are less grandiose.

But foxes make better guesses about the future. The future is nuanced.

People get fooled by their own supposed expertise. They get deeper and deeper into arcane knowledge and think it really tells them something. But Tetlock concluded that more general perspectives - taking into account the information from multiple areas of study, and more than one perspective - gives people a better read on the likely future.

August 5, 2010 - why do you think that?

2010-08-05T10:12:00.000-07:00

I've written in the past about what we should do when we learn that something we have long believed turns out not to be true. (In brief, strive to change those beliefs to be more in line with reality. Doesn't that sound easy?)

But where do these beliefs come from in the first place? Why do we believe them?

On a personal level, according to the brain and linguistical research work of George Lakoff and others (see "Don't Think of an Elephant," and "The Political Brain") it all comes down to "framing."

Have you ever heard an argument where suddenly it's clear that one side is about to lose? Their evidence in tatters, their rhetoric shattered, you imagine that surely they will back down ... but no.

It was never about the evidence.

When you knock down the supposed reason for their belief, another one immediately takes its place. The frame - which only sees what it is convinced must be true - remains.

Framing is really nothing more than a metaphor, a story that begins with the body, and winds up as a filter for all we understand. For instance, the love of the mother for the child creates a literal sense of warmth in the child, a warmth centered in the heart. We believe it because we feel it.

From there, it's only a short hop to to saying that your heart belongs to your mother - until, of course, someone else generates even more heat.

On a political level, it gets a little more complicated. But maybe not much more.

Lakoff argues that both conservatives and liberals base their political philosophies on the idea of the family, that earliest and most formative of social experiences.

Lakoff says that conservatives have the frame of the strict father. Liberals believe in the nurturing mother. Each of those frames, those stories, then plays out in a host of ways.

The strict father believes in right and wrong, reward and punishment. The nurturing mother believes in kindness and meanness, in learning and forgiveness. Those orientations can be directly tied to individual willingness to support law enforcement, or social services.

In the political realm there is something else: repetition over time.

I was also doing some reading about the early development of think tanks. (See William F. Buckley's "The John Birch Society and me," and the Heritage Foundation's "The origins of the modern American conservative movement," both articles freely available on the Web.)

Following the failure of Barry Goldwater's run for the presidency in 1964, conservatives of the time adopted a simple approach: put together a list of core beliefs. Keep talking about them. Set up institutions that could be contacted by media looking for quotes on "the other side."

The ascendancy of the conservative mindset, the reflexive belief that "lowering taxes" is good, no matter what they pay for, can be directly attributed to that strategy. It took almost half a century of more or less consistently applied effort. Changing beliefs takes time.

So why do we believe what we believe?

Because we try to make sense of the world. Because we are hooked by good stories, and the stories we hear early enough, and often enough, begin to sound right.

Some of those story tellers are "experts." And next week, I'll tackle this question: can they be trusted?

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LaRue's Views are his own.

July 29, 2010 - here come the homelanders

2010-07-29T10:13:00.000-07:00

One of the talks I most enjoy giving is about Strauss and Howe's generational theory of American history. Their work ("Generations: the history of America's future," and "the Fourth Turning") details the interactions of four distinct generational types. These types follow each other repeatedly, making a predictable cycle of historical moods.

When I started giving the talk, I focused on the four generations then in the work place: the Silents (born 1925-1942) occupying senior management positions, Boomers (born 1943-1964) beginning to move into those positions, Gen-Xers (born 1964-1981) on the front lines, and a sprinkle of Millennials (born 1982-2001), just starting.

I gave the talk last week, and guess what? The Silents, at least in that room, were gone - all retired. Boomers and Gen-Xers were in charge, and the Millennials had arrived in force.

I have been giving this talk for a long time, it seems.

But what about the next generation?

Strauss and Howe have given them a name: the "Homelanders." This is the generation raised in the shadow of 9/11, much as the Silent generation was raised in the shadow of World War II.

My audience found the name sobering.

Generations are forged as the result of two factors. One of them is world events. Every generation has unique memories of shared experiences: the death of JFK, the moon walk, VietNam, the Challenger explosion, the Berlin Wall coming down, Columbine, etc.

But the second factor is the pendulum swing of parenting styles. Moms and dads loosen oversight of their offspring to the point of near abandonment, and their children grow up to tighten the oversight of their children to the point of suffocation.

The Silent and Homelander generations, history suggests, fall at the suffocation end of the cycle.

Evidence?

I think the clearest example happened back in April of 2008. As Lenore Skenazy wrote in an editorial, "Why I let my 9-year-old ride the subway alone" for the New York Sun, she left her son in downtown New York's Bloomingdales because he wanted to see if he could get home, all by himself, by subway and bus. He did, too. It took about twenty minutes. But he was "ecstatic with independence," said his mom.

But that's not the end of the story. Skenazy wrote, "Half the the people I've told this episode to now want to turn me in for child abuse. As if keeping kids under lock and key and helmet and cell phone and nanny and surveillance is the right way to rear kids."

I heard Skenazy speak on talk radio shortly after the story. And there were two threads. One of them was sharply accusatory. How would she have felt if something had happened to her son? Terrible, she said, but the crime statistics around Bloomingdales were roughly comparable to Boise, Idaho, and nobody seems to think Boise children need to be carted around in Hummers.

The second thread was interesting. People called in to report their first moment of real independence: riding a bus somewhere. A bike trip across a busy street. The first camp or road trip.

Those were the moments that began to define a sense of self, that celebrated the birth of autonomy. It was important. It meant something.

Parents communicate to their children a vision of the world. Sometimes, that vision is colored by confidence; sometimes, by fear.

But we can be sure of one thing. The next generation will conclude what every generation concludes: they weren't raised right.

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LaRue's Views are his own.

July 22, 2010 - petitions

2010-07-22T10:13:00.000-07:00

It was just a matter of time.

Libraries generate a lot of traffic - from 1,000 to 2,000 people a day depending on the library's size. Our patrons represent a good cross-section of the community.

Library users tend to be engaged in other ways. For instance, many of them are registered to vote.

So it's no surprise that the petition-gatherers have found us.

As it happens, free speech is one of the core values of the public library. Advocating for various issues, asking for signatures or donations for political causes, is a whole category of free speech, and clearly protected by the United States Constitution.

Of course, there are two kinds of petition-gatherers: some are respectful and polite, and others are pushy and argumentative.

For a long time, the library's general procedure has been this: you need to let us know you're here, you have to stand outside (not inside) the library, you can't block passage either into or out of the library, and you can't harass our customers.

Just asking somebody to sign a petition is not harassment. Let me emphasize this point: all any library patron has to say is "no thanks," and keeping walking. It's a useful skill to develop.

If the gatherer keeps following you, berates you, grabs you, or stands between you and the door, that's harassment. When that happens, we'll kick them off the property, at least. Just let us know.

The library doesn't have anything to do with who shows up. Their presence does not imply our endorsement. Not too long ago, we had people gathering signatures for this fall's Amendments 60 and 61, and Proposition 101, whose provisions would shut down libraries all across Colorado. I think, personally, that's a really bad idea.

But support for free speech doesn't just mean "speech you agree with." Lively political debate, informed with current and relevant information, is mostly a good thing. Libraries happily supply intellectual ammunition to both sides of nearly any issue.

But as the petitioners get more common, so too do various unpleasant incidents. I saw one guy talk a young woman out of $5 she clearly didn't want to give. One pair of petitioners created a subtle blockade in front of the door. One guy demanded that we supply him with a table and chair. (No.)

We can't supervise these people every moment.

On the other hand, we can place a few reasonable limits: we can constrain them to a particular location, well away from the front door. We can limit how much time they have for a particular cause, and we can shoo them away when they break the rules.

So the library board is considering these options. We may well create some marked off zones for petition-gatherers to congregate. We may have to establish a limit, a maximum hours per cause per week just to make sure that everybody gets a chance.

If you have thoughts about this, feel free to email me at jlarue @ dclibraries.org. Our concern is to both ensure the constitutional right of expression, but also to preserve your right to enjoy the library without having to run a gauntlet every time.

Meanwhile, advocates for causes might do well to remember that obnoxious behavior, in-your-face rudeness, turns people AGAINST your cause.

Be polite.

July 15, 2010 - what the nation needs

2010-07-15T10:14:00.000-07:00

Recently libraries were in the news in Colorado and the nation. But it was weird news.

The first case was Peter Boyles, who got very exercised that some newly built libraries in Adams County didn't have flags flying in front of them. My first thought was, Good for him. What a great opportunity to encourage citizens to step up and show their civic pride.

It happens that I know something about the situation in Adams County. They've done a wonderful job of building their inviting new libraries on very tight budgets; outside improvements and landscaping happen last.

When we opened our Highlands Ranch Library in 2000, the local Rotary club underwrote a flagpole, and then-state-senator John Evans got us a flag that had flown over the nation's capital. At our Philip S. Miller Library, a library volunteer and Board member, Sue Meacham, sponsored the flagpole in memory of her husband, Fred. That's what community involvement looks like.

But of course that wasn't where the radio pundit was going. No, the main findings seem to be that first, public buildings are required by law to have flags and flagpoles! (Um. No, they're not. Look it up.) Second, what outrageous proof that librarians were not patriots! (Wrong again.)

It happens that about 80% of the libraries in Colorado do have flags and flagpoles. The ones that don't, tend to be in rented buildings, or are part of municipal complexes where there's a flag flying, but usually in front of city hall.

The bottom line: instead of taking the opportunity to build civic pride by engaging citizens, this was all about destroying civic pride by seeking to undermine the reputation of one of our nation's most effective and credible public institutions.

In the name of patriotism?

The second new item was a Fox News piece in Chicago, questioning whether public libraries were just a waste of taxpayer dollars. No particular evidence was presented that they were. But several imputations were made: for one thing, libraries are a really dated idea, going back to 1900 B.C. (It's kind of like another really old idea called "the alphabet.")

For another, they asked, who even uses the library? Based on one day's video shoot at one location, more people were using Internet stations than were browsing shelves for books. Besides, they said, Illinois is on the verge of fiscal collapse, and here's a great way to save money!

It may well be that TV news people don't use libraries. If they did, they'd notice that library parking lots are packed, in Douglas County even more so than Chicago, and Chicago has some of the busiest libraries in the world. And never mind that we have plenty of data that shows library Internet use grows other kinds of library use (checkouts, reference questions, program attendance), too.

I'd also like to point out that closing every library in the state of Illinois wouldn't do much to help the state's budget, since most libraries get their modest funding locally.

But I think some people who think of themselves as patriots and fiscal conservatives are missing the point here.

To hear radio and TV people tell it, the problem is that people can't seem to find a sufficient number of American flags, or just aren't spending enough time sitting in front of their radios and televisions.

These aren't problems that worry me much. Here's one that does: today's generation of children, according to numerous studies, is the first in the history of our nation to be growing up /less/ well educated than its predecessor. That's in sharp contrast to, for instance, China.

That fact has sweeping implications for our country's future in a time of increasing global competitiveness.

You want to talk patriotism? How about the radical idea that fostering the skills and exercise of literacy, encouraging the populace to read, to gather and discuss, to get their facts right, to engage, and to build rather than destroy, is precisely what this nation needs.

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LaRue's Views are his own.

July 8, 2010 - library connects

2010-07-08T10:14:00.000-07:00

One of the recurring discoveries of my life is that everything connects. Get interested in something, and it leads you to something else. That leads you to the next thing. Before long, you're interested in anything.

Following connections is great fun in your personal reading habits. It's fun for organizations, too.

For instance, the Douglas County Libraries is deeply interested in its many overlapping communities. The more we know about them, the more we can gather resources - people, information, facilities - to help the larger community succeed.

This week, I'd like to highlight three things in which the library is involved, all interesting and important.

The first is an upcoming business forum in Parker. On July 14, at both 7:30 a.m. and 6:30 p.m., there will be an hour-and-a-half meeting at the Parker Library. Jointly sponsored by the Parker Economic Development Council, the Parker Chamber of Commerce, and the Downtown Development Council, this meeting has a simple aim. The sponsors hope that anyone who either does business in the greater Parker area, or would like to, will come and talk about their issues and needs.

We know that many business are struggling. We know, too, that economic development organizations can provide useful support. But what's most needed right now in the greater Parker area? Advocacy at the town? Workshops on such topics as human resource issues, pending legislation, or new technologies? Time to network with other businesses?

The outcome of the meeting is to forge what some community members are calling "One Voice for Parker" - a unified and integrated business perspective. For more information, see onevoiceforparker.blogspot.com.

A second project is called "The Giving Tree." The work of a group of Leadership Douglas County alums (which includes a growing number of librarians), the Giving Tree is repeating last year's successful drive for school supplies. These supplies are then donated to needy Douglas County School District students.

This year, the Giving Tree is partnering with the Douglas County Education Foundation in their "Fill the Gap" program. The drive will run from July 12th through the 30th. The library is the primary drop-off location for school supplies or donations. You'll also see volunteers, from 9-2, Saturday and Sunday, at four of the six Safeway stores in Douglas County (Castle Rock, Highlands Ranch, Lone Tree and Parker). These volunteers will also accept supplies and donations.

The third project is called "The Wisdom Within These Walls."Anne McGhee-Stinson is a Douglas County resident associated with the Front Range Theatre Company (formerly known as the Castle Rock Players). Recently, she interviewed various local seniors then wrote up what they said. The presentation of these alternately funny and touching stories incorporates music, and an innovative "shadow box" technology.

Thanks in part to some funding from the Douglas County Libraries Foundation, "The Wisdom Within These Walls" will be presented Reader's Theatre style at the Parker Mainstreet Center (July 9-11), and at the Tri-Lakes Center for the Arts in Palmer Lake (July 16-18). More information is available at the website: www.thewisdomwithinthesewalls.com. The productions benefit both the Castle Rock Senior Center and the Silver Key.

Business, education, and live theater - what's the connection?

Your community, your library.
--
LaRue's Views are his own.

July 1, 2010 - Dean Ruppelt

2010-07-01T10:15:00.000-07:00

Dean Ruppelt is a patriot.

He served in the Army Reserves from 1982-1987. He served another stint in the Navy from 1987-1991. In September of 2007, he joined the National Guard.

In August of 2008 he got married (on 08/08/08, in fact - a brilliant stratagem to make the date itself memorable.)

And on January 2009, he got called up.

At Fort Hood he got two months training. He left for Kuwait at the end of June, where he got two more week's training, this time in dealing with IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices).

On July 12, 2009, he arrived in Iraq.

Dean told me that the surge he was part of marked the biggest military deployment from Colorado since World War II.

There's a program called anysoldier.com that links up soldiers that don't have folks to write them. But Dean didn't need that. He not only had a wife, but it happens that before he went to Iraq he was a maintenance technician for the Douglas County Libraries. He has a lot of friends there.

Thanks to the indefatigable work of Lisa Casper (who works both at our Highlands Ranch Library and at the nearby Tattered Cover), his supervisor Wes Cook, and many other library employees, Dean got a steady stream of emails, movies, socks, bars of soap, and candy.

Nothing went to waste, he said. The great favorite was candy, but for a surprising reason. The soldiers would pass them along to Iraqi children - a way to make friendly connections in a time of trouble.

At night, the soldiers would sit outside together and read stories from their pen pals. Dean's stories were about people and places he actually knew. That makes a difference.

Before Dean left for Iraq, he put in 17 days a year to drill with the Reserve. The library paid him for those days. While he was in Iraq, the library held his job for him - as indeed it was obligated to do under the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Acts. Meanwhile, staff even sponsored a plaque for him at the Highlands Ranch Veterans Monument.

But of the 24 people in Dean's platoon, 6 people came back unemployed. You can't hold onto somebody else's job if you go out of business yourself. Dean admits that he was worried - the library has lost quite a few jobs through attrition over the past year.

When he got home (March 31, 2010) Dean was grateful to have work to return to. Direct exposure to war changes people. It's a lot to process. He said that coming back to people and work he knew made it easier to readjust.

But then Dean did something to express his gratitude. He nominated the Douglas County Libraries for a "Patriotic Employer" Award. It was a tricky thing; he had to submit it five times. But eventually, the National Committee for Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve granted it.

The award was presented to me on behalf of the library on May 28, 2010. We're having it framed, and will post it at the Philip S. Miller Library in Castle Rock.

That occasion gave me the opportunity to say three things. First, the people who work at the library were greatly relieved to have Dean come back to us, safe. Second, I am deeply proud of Dean for his extraordinary sacrifices for his country, and that pride is widely shared throughout our library. Third, it's ironic that the library gets the award for patriotism.

Dean Ruppelt is a patriot.

---
LaRue's Views are his own.

June 24, 2010 - once upon a time there was a princess

2010-06-24T10:15:00.000-07:00

Former county commissioner Melanie Worley told me recently about her first job. She was a fairy princess.

A local movie theater hired her, gave her a gown, cape, and wand, and instructed her to supervise the frequent hordes of children. Sometimes, she said, she had to bonk them with her wand.

It was excellent training.

Years later, when conflicts were running high between various government agencies, she suggested the formation of a group now known as the Partnership of Douglas County Governments (PDCG). It is comprised of representatives from Douglas County, the towns of Castle Rock, Larkspur and Parker, the cities of Castle Pines North and Lone Tree, the Highlands Ranch Metro District, the Douglas County School District and the Douglas County Libraries.

In brief, the PDCG makes it easier for governments to play well together. How? By introducing everyone to each other, and giving them a chance to share what is going on in their worlds.

Another countywide group - created in large part by now State Representative Carole Murray, Castle Rock Chamber of Commerce Director Pam Ridler, and ably assisted by Melissa Moroni - is called Leadership Douglas County. For the past eight years, a group of applicants has learned about the issues of the county, and, often, then stepped up to leadership positions. Such positions - on boards, commissions, and task forces - are always in need of new talent.

When Melanie Worley was termed out of her commissioner seat, she moved on to become the director of communications for Developmental Pathways (developmentalpathways.org), which "is dedicated to individuals with disabilities." She moved from public service to human services. (She would say, "it's all human services.")

And that's a nice parallel for the story of leadership development in the county. The 2010 class of Leadership Douglas County, in partnership with the Douglas County Community Foundation, recently produced a report called "Human Needs and Services in Douglas County: A Stakeholder's Assessment."

After conducting a series of interviews with 27 nonprofit and Douglas County human service agencies, and 46 surveys of community stakeholders, the report authors found the following:

* Human services needs have increased significantly. Douglas County has among the lowest rates of poverty in the nation. But let's put that in human terms: "Nearly 12,000 residents of Douglas County are living at or below federal poverty levels. Thirty-one percent of these are children." That's more people than live in either Castle Pines North or Lone Tree.

* Poverty, homelessness and reports of child abuse have more than doubled in the past three years.

* Stronger partnerships and even nonprofit mergers may be necessary to achieve sustainable service.

* Volunteers in Douglas County have demonstrated a keen ability to directly assist people in need. But there's still a shortfall of revenue.

* Charitable giving remains stagnant. Money to address human service needs comes from philanthropy or taxes. Douglas County lags both Colorado and the nation for charitable giving as a percentage of per capita income.

Nonetheless, the final finding is this:

* Optimism about sustained quality of life in Douglas County is high. And why not? We have much to be grateful for.

Yet, business, government and nonprofit leaders all agree that if we, as a county, fail to address these growing needs, the quality of all of our lives will suffer.

I commend the Leadership Douglas County class of 2010 for raising the important issue of the need and state of human services in our community. Fixing it will take more than waving a wand.

---
LaRue's Views are his own.

June 17, 2010 - self-publishing on the rise

2010-06-17T10:16:00.000-07:00

June 10, 2010 - what would Google do?

2010-06-10T10:16:00.000-07:00

Almost everybody uses Google, even librarians.

And it gets easier all the time. It used to be, if you wanted to find the location of the nearest chain restaurant, you would type in the restaurant name, then look for locations.

That still works. But now, on that golden first page of hits, you'll also find a map of the Denver or Douglas County area.

How does that happen?

The short answer is "geocoding of IP addresses." That is, your Internet provider can be identified; the ranges of Internet Protocol numbers can be matched up to a geographic location. Helpfully, Google gives you results that are customized to your region.

What helps you also helps Google. Their business model is simple: advertising pays the bills. Obviously, the more local the advertising, the more likely you are to take advantage of it, which benefits the local business, which justifies buying the ad.

But this may bear more thinking about. Let me restate the issue: a combination of location and advertising drives the "hits" on your search screen.

For instance, I recently heard about an example given by a national library speaker, one Stephen Abram. He's been doing the same searches on Google as he travels around the country. But he gets different results.

One of the search terms is "Obama." In one southern city, he reported, the first hit to come up was a paid link by a nearby "birther" site (questioning whether Obama was born in the United States). "Search optimization" is another way to say "manipulated results."

I also read an article whose title begins with "How Apple Could Slay Google ..." by Daniel Eran Dilger. In brief, he argues that Apple could shut down the Google monopoly simply by building ad blocking into its browser.

Over time, he writes, "this would rid the web of ads and turn content into a paid model much like what existed before the web destroyed print, periodicals and newspapers with low quality content framed by copious amounts of irritating, flashing ads that pay just enough to perpetuate themselves and starve out good content, but not enough to actually fund high quality writing, reporting and other content."

There is certainly a lot of "content" on the Web. But Dilger is right that a good deal of it is low quality, and sometimes considerably lower than many of the newspapers and magazines it seems, inexorably, to be replacing.

Meanwhile, more and more of us put our contacts, our calendars, and our correspondence "in the cloud." In the cloud means "not on our own computers, but on those belonging to commercial entities."

It's hard to see where the trend is going when you're in the middle of it. Or as I once heard a science fiction author say, once you hear about the automobile, anybody can imagine a superhighway system. But it takes a science fiction writer to imagine the traffic jam.

Email was a boon. Spam is a problem.

The trend is clear: we are "monetizing" our content, and the "market" has increasingly biased results.

It's a good thing we have counterweights to the commercialization of information. It's a good thing we have public alternatives, a way to leverage the cooperative purchasing power of our citizens to find content whose sole purpose isn't to probe our pockets for loose change.

It's a good thing we have libraries.

---
LaRue's Views are his own.

June 3, 2010 - whom should you trust?

2010-06-03T10:17:00.000-07:00

Years ago, a friend of mine adopted a dog from the pound. The dog, a beautiful German shepherd/Doberman mix, had clearly been mistreated. The first time I met him, I greeted him with a happy "hello!" and put out my hand to pet him. He was so frightened he wet the carpet. Other dogs so treated turn vicious.

For humans, trust probably begins as our earliest childhood experience. As infants, we laugh or cry; somebody comes to see that we're OK.

If nobody comes, or they behave different each time, our openness to the world closes. We get suspicious and paranoid. We have trouble trusting.

Our early treatment in the world, while not absolutely definitive, touches our feelings about all kinds of things.

I'm reading a book called "How we decide," by Jonah Lehrer, who wrote something that really struck me. Our emotions, he said, are not irrational. Rather, they are deeply empirical.

He described one experiment about people who had to pull cards from one of four decks. One of the decks was "poison," costing big point losses in the experimental game. But it took maybe 20-30 tries before there was enough evidence to figure that out.

Nonetheless, in almost every case, people had a bad feeling about that deck long before the conscious mind knew what was up. The bad feeling manifest itself by a slight clamminess of the hands when they reached for the deck, a slight speeding up of the pulse.

The point is: we're wired to try to make sense of the world, to predict what's going to happen. To put it another way, both emotionally and mentally, we constantly strive to adjust ourselves to reality.

Lehrer also discusses many ways in which our neurochemistry can lead us astray. Our feelings aren't always reliable; they can be fooled.

We tell ourselves stories about how things are, and those stories can get so deeply engrained in us that they're hard to change, even when they're wrong.

A combination of these factors leads, I think, to the current lack of trust in some public institutions.

Remember last year when the state passed a "transparency" bill? It mandated that public school districts put their "checkbooks" up on a website. The theory: this total exposure of finances would result in greater public trust.

I didn't believe it. I believe, in fact, that it's likely to result in the opposite.

For instance, the Denver Post ran a front page article about how metro area public school districts had spent shocking amounts of money (thousands of dollars out of billions of dollars) on coffee. A person finding this expense on the website might say, "a shocking waste of tax payer dollars!"

But talk to somebody who bought the coffee, and they'll tell you the rest of the story behind the expense: he picked up coffee on the way into an emergency meeting of parents, a crisis team coming together in the wake of a student suicide. Later, the parents reimbursed him. Those details don't show up in the checkbook, at least not right next to each other.

"Transparency" in this case, in order to lead to trust, would require not just comprehensive review of expenses, but enough context to make sense of them.

And who is willing to spend that much time really digging into how things connect, when it's so much easier just to look for dirt -- or the appearance of it? Especially when you're just sure it's got to be there.

Logically, the best indicator of institutional trustworthiness should be experience over time. Consistent performance, walking the talk, increases trust.

But if the owner pets and praises the dog one time, and beats him the next, regardless of the dog's behavior, trust isn't easy to come by.

And that's true whether the dog is the citizen or the institution.

--
LaRue's Views are his own.

May 27, 2010 - show up

2010-05-27T10:17:00.000-07:00

Sometimes it's hard for me to imagine the life of the politician.

I pondered that as I sat in the iMax theater of Douglas County's astonishing Wildlife Experience and listened to gubernatorial candidates John Hickenlooper and Scott McInnis.

The forum was sponsored by the Douglas County Business Alliance, which keeps a close eye on Colorado legislative matters. Each candidate answered five questions from the DCBA, then took questions from the crowd.

Hickenlooper is the current mayor of Denver. McInnis is a former House Majority Leader for the Colorado House of Representatives, and a former U.S. Representative.

In some ways, their answers really weren't that different. They were speaking to business people. Not surprisingly, they showed great sensitivity to business issues. The difference to my mind was largely of style.

Hickenlooper, a Democrat, is the un-candidate. As he said, this is only the second office he's ever run for.

McInnis is more the polished insider, complete with Republican Party-approved talking points and sound bites.

It will be interesting to see which approach resonates best in a time when there is so much anger against politics-as-usual and Washington D.C. in particular. Meanwhile, I offer my profound sympathies to both of them as they start working the long, long campaign trail.

Another group of politicians comprise the City Council of Castle Pines North. By the time this column appears, they will have decided on the Urban Renewal Authority.

Like the gubernatorial race, there are two views. Here's the first: the City Council is seeking to add as many tools as it can to its municipal tool chest. The Urban Renewal Authority is a well-tested and effective mechanism for city development.

So is the so-called TIF - tax increment financing. The idea is this: cap the existing property tax at its current value. That becomes the base. As development occurs, and property values rise, any taxes collected over the base remain with the authority, which can then use the money for infrastructure and special projects.

The other side of the issue is this: the area of the authority is huge. Castle Rock's Downtown Development Authority (DDA) and the Parker Authority for Reinvestment (PAR) both concentrate on specific, fairly limited downtown areas. Castle Pines North's authority includes over 3,500 acres, most of it undeveloped agricultural land.

Over the next twenty years or so, an estimated 12,000 new residents may move within the boundaries of the new authority. Those people will want services, such as fire protection, schools, and libraries. But if those properties fall under a TIF, the agencies responsible for providing those services will collect only the revenue generated by agricultural land. That's not enough money to provide the level of services suburban households require. Yet the new residents will certainly expect them.

So the TIF, potentially, puts a lot of money and decision-making ability in the hands of the city, which right now directly controls the authority. It removes both of those things from other agencies, without removing the responsibility to provide service. While other funding mechanisms have been discussed to fund libraries (using TIF funds themselves for construction, and Public Improvement Fees for operations), it's all untried and speculative.

So the people making these decisions are making some big gambles on the future of their young city.

My final observation about politicians speaks to those who are leaving office. Earlier this year, Castle Rock's Randy Reed was term-limited out. Just recently, Pat Braden was termed out from the Lone Tree City Council. Both of them gave countless hours and attention to civic issues.

And although not elected, Acting Superintendent Steve Herzog certainly faced a host of political issues as he dealt with the school district's budget crisis. He provided clear vision and able direction in a time of great transition. I wish him well in his new post as Superintendent of the Reed Union School District (RUSD) in Tiburon, CA.

Candidate for Governor, council members, acting school superintendent -- somebody has to pay attention to our public square. So it's worth saying: even when I disagree with these folks, I'm grateful for them. They show up.

--

LaRue's Views are his own.

May 20, 2010 - praise the entrepreneur

2010-05-20T10:17:00.000-07:00

Guess what I know?

I know who created 60-80% of all the net new jobs in this country over the past ten years. I know how many of them there are. I know old they are, what gender they are likely to be, and a little bit about their background.

I know where they live.

And I know how to help them. (Thanks to the wonderful research of a librarian friend of mine, Christine Hamilton-Pennell. See growinglocaleconomies.com.)

It's not a secret. On the other hand, despite all the information that's out there, you don't hear much talk about it. That's odd, since the economy is surely one of the most important issues faced by Douglas County.

There are several big ways to promote economic development.
* Business attraction and recruitment. The idea here is to bring in big outside employers. Usually, that means big box retail. The idea is that big employers generate all kinds of benefits, although it often takes various kinds of tax incentives to get them here.
* Business retention. Keep the ones we've got! (Sometimes, those big employers pull out, too.)
* Workforce development. Some people need help to get started, whether it's in acquiring basic computer training, learning how to write a resume, understanding a little bit about work place expectations, and so on.
* Reduce "income leaks." There are people who live here, but spend their money elsewhere. A thriving economy invests in itself.
* But here's the big one: support the unsung hero of the local entrepreneur.

What do I mean by entrepreneur? I like Hamilton-Pennell's definition: "an entrepreneur is someone who perceives an opportunity and creates and grows and organization to pursue it."

What's so important about entrepreneurs? Consider the following:
* 97.5% of firms have fewer than 20 employees. These small firms created 60-80% of the net new jobs over the past decade.
* Two-thirds of the the net new jobs were created by firms 1 to 5 years old. They are responsible for half of the United States' non-farm real Gross Domestic Product.
* Half of the U.S. businesses are home-based.

Who are these entrepreneurs? We know a few things about them.

First, they comprise roughly 10% of the global population.

From 1996-2007, Americans between 55 and 64 had a higher rate of entrepreneurial activity than those aged 20-34. But don't count out the youngsters yet. Limited job market leads teens to consider entrepreneurship as a viable - and maybe a vital - alternative

Here are a couple of interesting data points about "minorities:" more men than women start new businesses (maybe because more than 60% of businesses are self-financed). But immigrants are far more likely to start new businesses than native born residents. How come? Well, think about it. Emigration takes, literally, a lot of get up and go.

One of the crucial factors about the entrepreneur is this: they're already right here in Douglas County. They don't have to be lured in with big breaks. They're probably not going to pull up and vanish -- they've raised their families here. They are part of our community.

And I said I know how to help them. It turns out that the main obstacles to entrepreneurial success are things the public library can readily overcome: a lack of knowledge of industry and market conditions and trends.

Specifically, entrepreneurs need to know:
* Who are my target customers?
* Who are my competitors?
* What are the characteristics of my market?
* What are the trends and developments in my industry?

For now, I can give this short piece of advice. Would-be entrepreneurs could start by looking at this website: douglascountylibraries.org/Research/iGuides/SmallBusiness.

But there's more to say about business in Douglas County, and more than one source of sound advice. Look here next week for news about an important cooperative project of the library and your local newspaper.

May 13, 2010 - he's back!

2010-05-13T10:18:00.000-07:00

What should you do when you have a strong response to something you read in the paper?

Let's say you like a particular column. You can pen an approving letter to the editor. You can send a glowing email or voice mail to the writer.

It is pleasant to find people with whom one agrees. Too few of us take the time to compliment others, and thereby build communities of interest and mutual support.

Not the writing kind? Well, you can always clip the column and pass it around to friends. Or find it online and forward it.

On the other hand, maybe you think the writer missed something important, or was flat out wrong. Maybe you have some special area of expertise that fills in significant gaps in the writer's presentation.

In that case, please do send a letter to the editor. When the community gets involved in issues, shares new information, and has substantive debate, a newspaper raises the general level of shared intelligence. That's good for everybody.

Sometimes, inevitably, you will have a strongly emotional and negative response to a column.

You have many options. Among them:

* Ignore it. I freely admit that there are a few columnists who so consistently irritate me that I refuse to read them anymore.

* Share your anger and irritation with your spouse. As an institution, a sympathetic marriage prevents many a violent outbreak against the body politic.

* Write an angry letter back, laced with personal attacks and labels you neither define nor defend. In this way, letter writing becomes a kind of intellectual aerobics, allowing you to hit your target heart rate in just 250 words. Be warned: your own letters may precipitate similar responses. But for some folks, this is the very definition of fun.

* Try to silence the writer through intimidation. Contact his or her bosses and threaten them with boycott or political opposition. Dangle vague legal threats. The true intellectual bully must hold this thought steady in his or her heart: "those who disagree with me must be forced to SHUT UP."

Each of these responses has a long tradition in our country. Together, they constitute a history of dissent, of the lively intellectual discourse of our nation.

Which brings me (quite literally) to the editorial page. Most of my columns over the past 20 years have been about libraries.

That's because libraries are my deep and abiding passion. Most of my future columns will probably still be about library issues.

But writing this column isn't part of my job. I don't get paid for it. I write it on my own time. Writing helps me think and learn. I enjoy it.

About once or twice a year, my columns spark strong disagreement in some readers -- usually offset by strong approval, by the way. I've noticed a trend: in almost every case, the issue involves federal policy.

I am not a federal employee.

Likewise, most of my opinions are not library policy. My bosses, the Library Board of Trustees, have not adopted resolutions about either national fiscal policy nor zombies. (Which is the greater omission, only time will tell). When something IS official library policy, I'll say so.

In a recent discussion about my column, library trustees said that while of course I have the right to speak freely on my own time (that being the point of the First Amendment, after all), it would be wise to remind people that my opinions, as prominently labeled by my column title, are LaRue's Views. No one else should be held accountable for them.

So you will no longer find my opinions under "library news."

See you next week.

---
LaRue's Views are his own.

May 6, 2010 - Looking for Adventure?

2010-05-06T10:18:00.000-07:00

[This week is yet another wonderful guest column, this one by one of our "behind the scenes" librarians making great things happen for our patrons.]

Looking for Adventure? - Deb Margeson

Who doesn’t want a little adventure in their lives? Especially if it’s free.

But, before I get to the adventure part, I should introduce myself. I am Deb Margeson, a Collection Development Librarian here at Douglas County Libraries. I know that I have the best job possible here at our library district.

I have the opportunity to choose all the adult fiction and nonfiction books for our branches (and no, if you are wondering, I don’t get to read them before I decide to buy them…). But don’t tell anyone else that I have the best job here; they might get ideas…

Something you don’t have to keep secret is what I’m about to share. You already know that DCL provides books, magazines, music, books on CD, Playaways, and DVD’s. And you probably also know that you can download audio books and eBooks to your various devices. Well, starting May 1, you get to check out some Adventure. And, like all those other items that we provide, there’s no charge.

The idea came from one of our librarians, who had heard that another local library district had museum passes available for checkout. She brought it to our Collection Development Committee to consider and we liked the idea.

Several of us got together and did some research. Librarians are great at sharing ideas and information with other librarians and Jefferson County Libraries shared their experience with checking out passes to local museums. They use a simple system that sounded like an easy way to provide an opportunity to check out a free pass to local attractions to all of you. We are calling it the Adventure Pass.

Starting May 1, Douglas County Libraries card holders can check out a free pass to the Wildlife Experience here in Douglas County. I imagine you have heard of them and maybe you have even visited.

The Wildlife Experience is a museum that connects people with wildlife and habitats. The people at the Wildlife Experience are great to work with and provided us with discounted passes to their museum. They are enthusiastic and excited about providing an easy way to allow you to get to visit all the experiences that they provide.

This is how it’s going to work. First visit our website (www.DouglasCountyLibraries.org) and look for the Adventure Pass icon. Click on that icon and you will be taken to the reservation system.

Take a look at the calendar and pick a date that works for you. It will show you if a pass is available. We have 6 passes available per day. Each pass allows 6 people free admission to the Wildlife Experience.

You can reserve a pass up to 30 days ahead of your visit. Once you choose your date and enter the required information, just print out your pass.

Sounds pretty easy, doesn’t it? Here’s the fine print. You do need to have a library card with us. But hey, we provide those for free too.

We are starting with just one local place to have an adventure. We want to work out any little kinks that sometimes happen when you embark on a new program.

But, if you have an "in" with another local attraction or museum and would like to take part in this program, get in touch with us. We want to expand because there are so many interesting places to visit in our area. And we want to provide you with an easy way to explore some of these.

If you still have questions, the knowledgeable folks at our Contact Center can be reached at 303-791-7323.

Starting May 1st gather up your family, friends and neighbors and get your Adventure Pass at Douglas County Libraries. And please don’t keep this a secret!

April 29, 2010 - railroad

2010-04-29T10:19:00.000-07:00

[This week's column is a true story, in his own words, by one Francois Pretorius. My thanks to library Delta County Libraries District Director Annette Choszczyk for passing it along.]

The North American Freight Railroads operate 90,000 miles of track 24 hours a day. On some of the busiest lines, such as Chicago to Los Angeles, and many other sections, trains are scheduled every 10 minutes under the watchful eyes of dispatchers far away in Omaha, Jacksonville, Fort Worth, Atlanta, Edmonton and Calgary. Observing the progress of the trains on their arrays of LCD screens, these dispatchers issue instructions to move switches, clear signals, and schedule time for the maintenance gangs to fix and grease and grind and level the track as needed. The operation is not as glamorous as the air traffic control system, but is every bit as complicated.

Tying all of this together is a communications network comprised of fiber-optic lines, radio base stations on mountain tops, copper wire strung on poles along the track, cell phone modems, satellite links and phone lines. Railroads have been operating for 150 years or so, and have seen every bit of new technology deployed. This mix of old and new is looked after by the back-office technicians, who co-ordinate the efforts of armies of maintenance personnel out in the field. If something breaks, a maintenance truck rolls, sometimes for a few hundred miles, and rain or snow, 24 hours a day, it gets fixed.

The trains have to keep running. Stopping a train can cost as much as $250,000.00 per hour, and can back up traffic for hundreds of miles, affecting dozens and dozens of other trains. If the communication circuits go down, the dispatchers can not issue instructions to clear signals, and things grind to a halt. If the problem can not be diagnosed within a few minutes, further experts are called out of their beds, and if they are stumped, the phones start ringing for the engineers that built the system originally, regardless of where they are or what they are doing. Nothing is more important than keeping those wheels turning.
I am one of those engineers, and I operate my business out of a little town in Paonia, Colorado. I get paid to answer the phone 24 x 7 x 365, and when it rings, it normally spells trouble, since by that time all the usual things have been tried, and train stoppages are snowballing on each tick of the clock. Very stressed people on the other side of the call are only interested in "what is wrong, and how do we fix it."

Thanks to the magic of the modern Internet, I am then able to remotely connect to computers far away, and assist in the troubleshooting. To ensure that I can be effective, I have two land line phones, an Internet voice phone, two cell phones from different providers, dial-up internet connections, and a DSL Internet connection.
Until the day the road construction people cut the fiber-optic cable between Delta and Paonia. I was in the middle of working with some of my customers to upgrade their system, when I lost voice and data communications with the outside world, and the town of Paonia and I learned with a shock that the cell-phone towers for both providers, the Internet circuits, and the phone lines all ran through the very same fiber-optic link. So much for connection diversity!

We could make local phone calls in town, and to the nearby town of Hotchkiss, but other than that, we were cut off from the outside world. I had a crisis on my hands, since we were in the middle of the upgrade process, and without my help, the railroad personnel could not go forward, and could not go back. A lot of trains were going to be stopped.

I started calling around town to see if anyone had a satellite internet connection, but no one did, and time was running out. Someone suggested I try the Hotchkiss Library, since they had a radio internet provider and may be ok.
Success! With my laptop under my arm, I walked into the Hotchkiss library, explained my predicament, and was given a table in the corner where I could set up camp. Within a few minutes I was back in contact with my customers, and we finished the upgrade in time to prevent any train delays.

One library saved the day!

---
LaRue's Views are his own.

April 22, 2010 - music options

2010-04-22T10:20:00.000-07:00

As a teenager, I listened to music in one of three ways: on my transistor radio (portable), on the radio in my room (a dedicated device plugged into the wall), or on the stereo.

For the stereo, I bought a few albums, but like most teenagers mostly I bought, and listened to, 45s.

45s had two songs, one on each side. The "A" side was the song that got radio play. But the "B" side was where things got interesting. It was where artists got to put up something a little different. So if Aretha Franklin had "Respect" on one side, she had "Ain't No Way" on the other. "Respect" ("R-E-S-P-E-C-T, find out what it means to me") was pop; "Ain't No Way" was the deepest soul music, the intersection of gospel and blues. The "A" side is what you paid for; the "B" side grew your musical tastes.

For today's teenager, even the music CD is passé. I'm having trouble finding anyone under 30 who has bought one in the past six months. When they pay for it at all, they buy individual pieces of music from iTunes.

In short, it hasn't taken long for music to undergo profound changes in format. The question for libraries is: how do we leverage the cooperative purchasing power of your tax investment to give you the broadest possible access to commercial music?

Our current main strategy is still the purchase of CDs. As I've noted in previous columns, I suspect there's a brisk business in the theft of intellectual property going on. That is, some people check out the CD, rip all the songs to their computers, and bring the CD back. This practice is not the library's intention. But I really don't have a good way to stop it.

We're investigating two other options that might be not only a better answer to copyright issues, but also a better fit to the times.

In Douglas County, people spend a lot of time in front of their computers. So point your browser to our website - DouglasCountyLibraries.org. Click on the icon near the top left of the screen - "eMedia to Go." Then scroll down the page to "Alexander Street Press." Explore.

What you get is a remarkable collection of music that streams to your PC. (There's more cool stuff, too.)

From the library side, what I like about this is that the music takes up no shelf space. It can't be stolen or damaged. We don't have to reshelve it. There are no calculations of fines or fees for late or lost materials.

Shortly, we'll be rolling out another service. Called "Freegal," it's an intriguing idea brokered by Sony. In brief, Sony bought the copyrights of over half a million songs, which it sells to libraries, then to library patrons, at a base charge (to the library) of $1.29 each.

There are two unique features: first, the library can "throttle" the downloads to limit a patron to, for instance, five downloads a week. This way, the annual subscription (about $19,000) lasts for a whole year. Freegal provides detailed reports about how much use the service gets, how many individual patrons there were, what kinds of music are chosen, etc.

The kicker is this: the patron gets to keep the song. It’s a legal download of music that never has to be returned.

Both of these solutions are, in some respects, improvements to our current offerings. They're not perfect. The content - individual song titles, for instance - aren't integrated into our catalog. That means you have to do multiple searches to find something.

I worry that the fragmentation of intellectual content among multiple vendors makes for many rich offerings, but ultimately, a confusing library experience.

Ultimately, though, I think of it like this. The "A" side of libraries is that we're doing a good job of keeping up with the wild changes in music formats. The "B" side is that there's a lot of interesting work still to be done to bring it all together.

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LaRue's Views are his own.

April 15, 2010 - Taipei Public Library

2010-04-15T10:20:00.000-07:00

[This week's column is by my daughter, Madeleine LaRue, currently teaching English in Taipei City, Taiwan. She is the child of two librarians, and as you can see, this has left its mark.]

The Taipei public library, by Madeleine LaRue

About a year and a half ago I read an essay by George Orwell called “Books vs. Cigarettes,” in which he defends of his habit of buying books by systematically proving that it is not, in fact, as expensive as other hobbies, such as smoking. I don’t smoke, and thank God, because I, like Orwell, already spend the majority of my paycheck on books. Since moving to Taiwan this has become problematic: all English-language books here are imported, and therefore astronomically expensive.

After a month or so in the country — by which time I had finished the books I’d brought with me from home and determined that the books at school, full of sentences like “Biff cannot open the door. She is angry!” would not quite satisfy my intellectual appetite — I began to worry. And then, luckily, blissfully, and with the help of a friend of mine, I discovered the Taipei Public Library.

The library has eleven floors and five or six elevators, none of which actually go anywhere. The foreign language collection is housed on the fourth floor — an ironic fact, since in Chinese culture the number four (and by extension the fourth floor) is unlucky. The collection consists mainly of English books, though occasionally a French, German, or Russian volume will crop up.

Like the libraries in the stories of Borges, the Taipei central branch has its own order of things, which is utterly incomprehensible to mortals. There are mysterious and delightful labels in the non-fiction section such as “Institutions Governing the Relation of the Sexes” (which turns out to contain books on wedding planning and marriage counseling) and “Breakfast Foods and Animal Husbandry.”

The section labeled “American Literature” is the largest, made up of British authors and Danielle Steele. Alphabetical order is nonexistent; the Dewey Decimal System is unheard of; books are classified according to the order in which your eyes find them. For this reason you cannot browse with intention; you can only wander and wait to stumble across an unobtrusive treasure.

The first thing I found was "The Complete Poems of Cavafy," which I have since renewed twice and will probably refuse to give back at all; the second was "Mrs Dalloway," which both prompted and resolved an existential crisis in me. The library’s collection of translated Chinese, Japanese, and Korean classical literature is impressive, and I have my eye on some Japanese fairy tales, including the very poetically-titled "Story of the Old Man Who Made Withered Trees to Flower."

In order to avoid the spurious elevators, I take the stairs between the first and fourth floors. One wall of the stairwell is glass, and looks out on to Taipei’s vast central green space, Daan Park. Another wall is decorated with posters, which are in Chinese except for the cheery yellow order, “Have a question? ASK A LIBRARIAN!” In the stairwell I often encounter other foreigners. We rarely speak, but we often exchange little embarrassed nods and guilty smiles. We are here ostensibly for the same reason — to indulge our addiction for books while ensuring that our paychecks remain firmly in our bank accounts.

And that’s what I’d tell everyone, Orwell included, but the truth is: I love the Taipei library for reasons that have nothing to do with money. I love it for its randomness and its good intentions, for its eager offering of calculus textbooks and outdated travel guides, and for its unintentional arrangement of itself into a microcosm of my experience in Taiwan. In the library, familiar things seem slightly foreign and surprising; yet at the same time, that foreignness suddenly reminds me incontestably of home.

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LaRue's Views.

April 8, 2010 - zombies

2010-04-08T10:21:00.000-07:00

I have zombies on the brain. I am not alone.

What got my attention was "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies," by Seth Grahame-Smith. (This incorporates the full text of Jane Austen's novel with a whole lot of zombie issues.)

Then I saw Will Smith in "I am Legend" (which I actually remembered as a science fiction novel, published the year I was born). I also noticed "The zombie survival guide: complete protection from the living dead," by Max Brooks. And of course, "Zombieland," featuring Woody Harrelson, "Resident Evil," and even video games like "Left 4 Dead."

Here's my thesis: trends say something important about the times.

Now let me say right up front that I get the current interest in another, more fantastic creature: the vampire. Vampires are sexy. They are strong, fast, beautiful, even glamorous.

They are also predators. They seek your bodily fluids. They exude conflict and danger and intimacy. Thus, they are exciting and appealing.

But no one ever says, "Whoah. That zombie is hot!"

On the other hand, not only are zombies all over today's books, and movies, and music (ever since "Thriller," now reputed to be in the works as a Broadway musical) but there's the interesting phenomenon of the "Zombie walk."

Imagine that you wander downtown one day to see maybe 50 people shambling in that arms-out, lurching manner, their faces made-up to show ghastly decay. They surround a laughing bystander, who disappears in their midst. Suddenly, they pull back, and now the victim is like them, made-up, shuffling forward, calling for "Brains!"

This kind of street art, a so-called "flash mob" (a bunch of folks gathered spontaneously for extremely silly purposes) seems to have started in 2001, in Sacramento, California. Since then, it has spread to other English-speaking countries: Canada, Australia, the UK.

The Guinness Book of World Records is tracking zombie walks now. The verified record is 4,026 participants. But crowds of twice that size have been claimed.

So what is going on with zombies? They made their appearance in novels and movies back in the fifties. They're back. People are hooked on them. Why?

I have asked some of the smartest people I know about this important issue. Here are a few of their ideas:

* we're media zombies. We hang out in front of the TV. We are too wired into the Internet. We stare at the screen, passive, stunned and stupid.

* we need safe targets for our aggression. I mean, they're already dead. And they're trying to eat your brains. Grab your chainsaws and shotguns!

* we fear that we are ourselves becoming zombies. Day after day, we are less and less alive. We don't pay attention. We are too slow, too dumb, too physically awkward. In our jobs, in our relationships, we may as well be dead. Yet, we move.

* we're scared, period. There was a surge of zombie literature and art, at least in America, after 9/11. We could, at any moment, suddenly find ourselves the victims of incomprehensible events, larger than us, reducing us to mere shadows of ourselves.

* we're surrounded by the walking dead. In some sense, the zombie scenario is about being overwhelmed by others, by the mindless viciousness of the crowd. The individual lost in the mob.

* we have lost our faith in all human institutions. Maybe that's a twist on "we're surrounded by the walking dead." But a lot of zombie movies feature the total breakdown of society. It's Armageddon, the end times, the collapse of culture into chaos. It's the main message of Fox news.

So take your pick. Zombies might be mindless entertainment. Or they might be the symbol for just what ails our culture.

It's worth thinking about. While you still can.

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LaRue's Views are his own.

April 1, 2010 - long term thinking in short supply

2010-04-01T10:24:00.000-07:00

Last week, I wrote about my new hero, Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Fed. A quietly brilliant economics professor, Bernanke's research focused on the history of the Great Depression. Following a crash precipitated by wild speculation, Bernanke came to believe that the business people and government of the time (the 1930s) did almost everything wrong.

What should have happened, he believed, was that more money needed to be pushed into the system, keeping people employed and products flowing. Instead, banks tightened up, the Federal Reserve of the time kept interest rates high (to avoid the non-existent problem of inflation), and the result was a decade of joblessness and abject poverty.

What are the odds that a scholar of that period should happen to preside over the Fed when history's dice rolled up precisely the same numbers? And have the courage to meet the challenge?

We got lucky.

So Bernanke applied what he'd learned. Interest rates dropped to almost zero. What is now called "the great bail-out" kept afloat a financial system whose collapse would almost certainly have led to Depression.

Since then, I've talked to a lot of people who still resent the bail-out. It didn't help when businesses offered multi-million dollar bonuses to the same people who got us into the mess. But let's be clear: the alternative was Depression.

Bernanke now warns us that one of the big problems we face is businesses too large to fail. Their sheer size, the interconnectedness of commerce across the globe, means that one collapse triggers others. That's sage advice. Fixing it will be complicated.

Now all of this leads me to my second point. It came up when I was talking over lunch about Tom Brokaw's profiles of, first, the "Greatest Generation," and second, the Baby Boomers.

After a lot of consideration, Brokaw labeled the Boomers "Unrealized." Their big dreams didn't come true.

Speaking as a Boomer myself, I would have used a different label. I would call us the Self-Centered Generation. And it speaks directly to the whole issue of today's profoundly anti-government rhetoric, now so common that it passes for truth.

The Greatest Generation, revered because they are mostly gone, were institution builders. They presided over the military, government, and big business. They applied collaborative intelligence to solve big problems.

The Boomers, by contrast, were and are institution destroyers. We can't collaborate to save our souls -- indeed, saving souls is just another example of how we tear institutions down (see the decline of mainstream churches, and the rise and likely fall of mega churches).

I sometimes believe that the anger of Tea Party activists comes down to precisely this. Just as Boomers were back in the 60s, we're by God angry at the Establishment. The problem is, now it's our establishment.

We're the ones running everything. With all the power in the world over the past decade, we proved incapable of maintaining either peace or prosperity. That starts to look like incompetence. It's enough to make you angry.

And the inhumanly ugly faces and voices of adults shouting at each other resembles nothing so much as the tantrum of a 2 year old who wants what he wants right now, even if it isn't possible. Especially then.

The enemy is not business, not government. The enemy is our startling inability, both as a generation, and as humans, to build and sustain institutions, either business or government, whose work we can respect.

But just as we need business to ensure quality of life, and the joy of productivity, we also need government to build the infrastructure -- physical, intellectual, and regulatory -- in which business can thrive.

We need long term thinking and it's in short supply.

So here's my big point: Institutions are necessary, both public and private. They are also interdependent. Let's hope that by and by a "greater" generation comes along again to show us how to run them.

Meanwhile, thank God for Ben Bernanke, a man who understood the value of his institution, and did the job it was made to do.

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LaRue's Views are his own.